Dragon Harvest (World's End Lanny Budd #6), by Upton Sinclair.

Sixth volume of the World's End series takes off running at beginning of 1939 with Monck calling Lanny at Bienvenu and the two talking about the situation sitting on rocks on the cliffs, with the high tide making it impossible for anyone hearing them from below. Monck is just out of Spain, rescued by the League Commission.

""Franco is the most efficient little murderer that any devil could have invented; he doesn’t know the meaning of mercy, or even of statesmanship, and his one idea is to slaughter every man, woman, and child who has opposed him. The safest way, he figures, is to kill all who did not actively support him. He has a whole hierarchy of priests to tell him that this is God’s will, and to absolve him every night for mistakes he may have made during the day. After all, if they were good people, he has sent them to heaven, and they won’t complain when they arrive.” ... “If the League Commission had known how near to collapse we were, they would surely not have urged our removal!” There was acid in his tone."

Monck had walked across from Barcelona and it had taken over two days, with roads thronged with poor refugees fleeing, without food, and Franco's forces bombing them for fun.

Lanny asked about his plans. Monck's family was in Paris, but he planned to travel to Berlin and lanny didn't ask for details, only offering funds. He chose a new name, Braun. Lanny explained he couldn't invite him home, since that would blow his cover, his life of partying with the glitterati on Riviera - European kings and Aga Khan, Duchess of Windsor, and similar sort.

The author mentions Lanny meeting various people at “Château de l’Horizon”, including the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and too Winston Churchill, who was yet to be catapulted out of his enforced retirement. Presumably the author is correct about the ex royal couple and Churchill both having been guests of Maxine Elliott, and one wonders how they reconciled to presence of one another. They were familiar, back in England, before he abdicated and was almost forever in enforced exile, but was he aware Churchill wasn't quite sympathetic, or would he have cared if he were?

Presumably the following is historical:-

"There were seldom fewer than thirty persons sitting down to lunch, and often twice that many gathered round the pool; when Churchill denounced Nazism the hostess would look up from her backgammon—or maybe six-pack bézique—and exclaim: “Winston, you are a social menace!” The guest would reply, most amiably: “Don’t worry, my dear Maxine, there isn’t a single person here who knows what I am talking about.”"

Churchill was interested when he heard who Lanny had met, and sent for him to hear his tales. He remarked that FDR seemed to be correctly and well informed about them.
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Lanny attempted seance, but Trudi wouldn't appear. Tecumseh said Lanny's fate was approaching. Parsifal had been experimenting with a crystal ball, and Lanny tried. First, he saw a crowded city with Chinese people, and then a yacht in clear blue water. He went out, and he saw the same yacht. He looked through binoculars and it was the Oriole. Beauty said it was Holdenhurst family from Baltimore whom he had met. He didnt remember except vaguely, with good reason. 

Beauty arranged with her friend Emily Chattersworth to have Lanny meet the young daughter, and Emily invited Reverdy Johnston Holdenhurst to dinner with his beautiful daughter Lizbeth, and Lanny found himself later talking to her alone after dinner. Beauty asked him, and he told her it was no use, however beautiful the young girl, because it would be not so different from his marriage with Irma. Beauty asked if he was still involved with the German woman, and he wasn't free to say she was dead, so he simply said he wasn't free to tell things about others. 

Beauty and her friends lay siege, and Sophie gave a grand party that really was Lizbeth's European debut, with musical where she showcased Lanny as art expert and music player, while Beauty invited the Holdenhurst family to an intimate dinner with Emily, Sophie and her husband; Reverdy invited them all for a day trip to Monte Carlo on the yacht, culminating with an invitation to Lanny to accompany them on their yacht to U.S. via coast of Africa and Brazil. 

Lanny understood it was a first choice given him, and Reverdy had talked to Emily about Lanny, having seen his daughter around him, but Lanny excused himself from accepting it, telling him Robbie was coming to Paris and needed Lanny to accompany him to Germany for business. They spoke of public affairs, and Reverdy said he'd like to meet Robbie, and perhaps invest. Robbie was doing very well now that war seemed looming on the horizon, and was busy, but would welcome such an interest. 

The Oriole was sailing the next day, but the women got busy, Emily Chattersworth called the Duchess of Windsor who was born a Warfield, named Bessie Wallis, not society, but had a mother who was a Montague, an F.F.V., "First Families Of Virginia", and the Duchess was happy to have her hometown high society see her at tea. 

But Lanny refused Emily Chattersworth for the first time in his life, and said he had another appointment, and wasn't in love and didn't want to encourage the girl to think so. He met Charles Bedoux at Château de l’Horizon, which was important for the President's agent. Bedoux spoke about the difference in Belgium in a couple of years to come.

Before the Oriole sailed, Lanny accompanied his mother and her friends to see them off, and drink a toast on the yacht. Reverdy said he'd like to visit Newcastle to see Robbie, and perhaps might see Lanny. Lanny agreed politely about seeing them if possible in Newcastle, and grew alarmed after they departed, wondering if Lizbeth had fallen so much in love and asked her father to plan the Newcastle visit before returning home.
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Lanny was packed to drive to Paris when he got a note in code from Raoul Palma who was back, and used a maneuver to meet him. Raoul told about how he managed to leave at last moment, and hoped Madrid would hold out, but Lanny told him Spain couldn't be saved, and they had to now try to save France. 

"The Cagoulards, or “Hooded Men,” had been exposed, but nobody had been seriously punished, and the authors of the conspiracy were so highly placed that they had not even been named. The heads of the “two hundred families” which ruled France had made up their minds that their interests required the overthrow of the Third Republic, and the establishment of some sort of dictatorship which would break the power of the labor unions, as had been so efficiently done in Italy, Germany, Austria, and Spain. The conspirators had retired “underground” for the moment, but they were as strong as ever, and as determined: great industrialists and bankers, cabinet members and other officials, and the heads of army and navy—such men as Admiral Darlan, General Weygand, and Marshal Pétain, the most honored names in France.

"The director had been at home only a few hours, but already had heard the situation in the school explained by his wife. It was a miniature of what existed throughout the whole country. The working-class world was split into factions, which spent the greater part of their energies in fighting one another instead of concentrating upon the common enemy. The Communists, by far the most active group, insisted upon following in the footsteps of Russia; they went to such an extreme as to argue that from the point of view of the workers there was no difference between a bourgeois republic and a Fascist dictatorship. Therefore, why fight for France? All wars were capitalist wars, and the workers could never win one. 

"“We have been teaching the workers pacifism for a century,” explained Raoul, “and it is almost impossible to unteach them, even after what they have seen in Spain. Some of our best lads have gone over to the Communists, because Julie kept insisting that France has to be armed now.” 

"Said the son of Budd-Erling: “It is hard for a man to practice pacifism while his neighbor is planting dynamite under his house.”"

Lanny joined his father in Paris. Their relationship had gone through various turns from Lanny's perspective, from a boyhood adoration to an ideological opposition, and while he still loved Robbie, there was a critical questioning that he no longer voiced. 

"If Lanny had mentioned the fact that the Cagoulards had taken the Rosselli brothers, editors of an Italian anti-Fascist newspaper of Paris, out into the woods and beaten them to death, Robbie would have answered coldly: “Well, they asked for it.”"

Robbie's deal with Göring was being cheated on by Göring, and Robbie wasn't happy. They discussed the European situation in context of Robbie's business, and also of the British fleet being what stood to protect U.S. in case of war. They met Schneider, who was bitterly contesting in court the nationalisation of Le Creusot by the Blum government. 

"France had one age-old trouble, which had been summed up in a sentence by the shrewd old Clemenceau: there were too many Germans. Forty million Frenchmen, facing eighty millions of the hereditary foe, if you included those which Hitler had taken or was clamoring to take under his dominion. France had Britain for an ally, but Britain was a sea power, and could not put on the Continent an army large enough to even the balance. France had been saved last time by her ally on the east, but now that ally had been ruined by the cancer of Bolshevism. The struggle inside France was between the Left, which had made an alliance with the Reds, and the Right, headed by the Comité des Forges, which wanted to break up this alliance, make friends with Germany, and join her in putting the Reds down for good. 

"Such was the situation. But now the most awful doubt had assailed the soul of Europe’s uncrowned munitions king. Suppose he had been making a mistake! Suppose Hitler refused to be a friend of the French steelmasters! Suppose he was worse than the Bolsheviks, and refused to fight them! Here he was, chewing up Czechoslovakia, and apparently planning to chew up Poland; and suppose he came to some sort of understanding with the Bolsheviks—where would Britain and France be then?

"Labor was in revolt against the increase in the cost of living, and the abolition of the forty-hour work week; there had been desperate strikes in the airplane industry, where France most needed loyalty and efficiency. The Baron and his friends had been clamoring for a “strong” government, which would tolerate no nonsense, and Premier Daladier had got from the Chamber the right to govern “by decree.” He had crushed the strikes by the method of mobilizing the strikers, with the result that labor had been driven to fury and was practicing sabotage, a sort of dull, slow civil war going all the time. Internal enemies were eating out the heart of France, at the very time that her external foes were menacing her life.

"Mussolini was demanding portions of French North Africa—actually meaning it, apparently, and threatening to seize them."

They talked of business directly, about what France needed in terms of number of planes, and Robbie told Schneider that Göring planned to produce nine hundred to a thousand planes every month, which wasn't a secret - Göring preferred to terrify his opponents, as did his boss. Schneider invited them for an important meeting. 

"There was to be a dinner in this palace, three days hence, a stag dinner, much like that which Schneider had given for Lanny a year ago. The same men would come, to meet both father and son: François de Wendel, senator of France and head of the great mining trust; Max David-Weill, representing the most powerful banking group in France; René Duchemin, of the chemical trust; Ernest Mercier, the electrical magnate; and so on.

"It might mean not merely a big order for planes; it might mean new expansion, fresh capital—for these men had gold, all the gold of the Banque de France, hidden in the most marvelous vaults in the world, underneath the sidewalks of Paris."

Schneider invited Robbie to speak to others after dinner. 

"Germany was overwhelmingly strong in the air. He was at liberty to talk about it, by Göring’s express authorization. Germany had no secrets, so the Reichsmarschall had declared. 

"Robbie smiled slightly as he said this last, and his hearers smiled even more openly. “Germany wants peace,” he added; “at any rate, that is what the Marshal assures me. He wants other nations to respect Germany’s strength and concede to her what she considers her just dues.”"

They asked about the said just dues, and whether Germany would limit to demands made so far. Robbie said his son knew the German leader personally, Robbie hadn't met him. They asked Lanny about him, and Lanny replied that he meant it when he said it but was a man of temperament - he had to be cautious about what he said, for it would get back to Germany soon enough. 

"“It appears certain that we must have planes.” So Schneider summed up the discussion. “We cannot be sure whether we shall use them against Germany or against Russia—but in either case, it is advisable to have them.”"

As a result of this Robbie got meetings with the government and with the air force, and the U.S. ambassador to France who also wanted the deal to happen. 

"Robbie had the tireless help of his son. Lanny didn’t seem to have anything else to do, and was so useful that Robbie insisted on paying his bills and charging it against the company. Lanny knew most of the personalities involved, and when he didn’t, he knew how to find out. He listened attentively to everything that was said, and if he asked questions, it was to help Robbie in getting to the bottom of some important matter. Only now and then, when the father was absorbed in technical matters, plans and specifications and prices, Lanny would shut himself up in his own room and say nothing about what he was doing. One more report would be typed and sent off to the Big Boss in Washington."

Paris was crawling with Nazi agents at every level, and Robbie and Lanny met Kurt at an event. Kurt knew Marceline was dancing in Paris, but hadn't met her. Lanny met uncle Jesse Blackless secretly. 

"Lanny and his father had been to see Marceline dancing; but her Red uncle said he wouldn’t go—it would cost him a lot of votes to be seen in a night club. When Jesse said such things, you had to watch him and catch the twinkle in his eye.

"Jesse told a curious anecdote of the struggle over the Soviet alliance, which had been the crux of French political life for the past two or three years. The treaty still stood, on paper, but the French generals—most of them in their seventies, several in their eighties, and all reactionary to their swords’ points—wouldn’t let the government implement the bargain by an exchange of plans and information. Schneider-Creusot had been under contract to manufacture big guns for Soviet fortifications, but these guns had not been forthcoming; the Soviet embassy in Paris had pleaded and argued, but without results. This had been a couple of years ago, when the Blum government was in process of nationalizing munitions plants, and Schneider had been fighting it tooth and toenail. One day a director in Le Creusot and member of the Baron’s family had called upon the Soviet ambassador and tactfully suggested a way by which the delivery of the guns might be speeded up—if the Soviet government would intimate to the French government that it did not wish to have Le Creusot nationalized! 

"Lanny had heard rumors of this episode, and said: “Do you really know that, Uncle Jesse?” 

"The other replied: “I was told it by the man to whom the proposal was made.”

"Now that Spain was gone, it represented the last contact of Russia with the western world, her last hope of a friendship in Europe. The Soviets wanted protection against Hitlerism, and were willing to promise protection in return; they had been willing to help Czechoslovakia, but the British Tories and the French Rightists had sold that small republic down the river. Now it was going to be a question of Poland; and what could Russia do for Poland when the Poles wouldn’t let them? Poland, in the view of the Red deputy, was not much more enlightened than Franco Spain; the country was governed by a clique of great landowners and military men. They wouldn’t admit Russian armies to Polish soil even to defend Poland against Germany, and France wouldn’t demand that they alter this policy; so what was the Soviet Union to do?"

Lanny asked if Soviet Russia would make a treaty with Germany, and uncle Jesse thought it was out of the question, since that would free Germany to attack West and control Europe right to Gibraltar, control Mediterranean and Caucasus, which would cause Soviet Union to wither away like a fruit on a tree. 

"“I can tell you, Uncle Jesse, the Führer has some sort of proposal up his sleeve. He has just made a long speech, and for the first time he failed to denounce the Soviet Union."

"Herr von Ribbentrop, Foreign Minister of the German Reich, ... had left behind him a staff of busy intriguers, supplied with unlimited funds. They whispered doubts concerning the good faith of Britain, the ex-salesman’s especial bête noir; Britain had always been ready to fight to the last Frenchman, and now she had made a deal with Mussolini, one of the implications of which was that Italy was to expand at the expense of France. Nobody was ever to expand at the expense of Britain! Otto Abetz, handsome and genial intellectual, friend of all the intellectuals of Paris, was tireless in his search for talent, and any writer who could be persuaded to realize the dangers which British intrigue offered to the French people could be certain of selling his writings—and certain of a publisher, too, for Abetz had a string of papers on his list, and paid them even more generously.

"Graf Herzenberg, ... explained the passionate interest which all Nazis took in the freedom of the Ukrainian people. In the process of splitting up the Czechoslovakian republic the Nazis had taken to calling the province of Ruthenia a new name; it was the Carpatho-Ukraine—and what an advancement toward European welfare it would be if these Ukrainians could be united to the rest of their brethren, now groaning in the chains of Bolshevism!

"That would be at the expense of Russia, of course; and the elegant ladies and gentlemen who danced in the ballroom of the Duc de Belleaumont guzzled his elaborate buffet supper, washed it down with Pommery-Greno, and listened with delight to the idea that France should break off with the hated Reds and give her assent to the Nazis’ setting up an “independent” Ukraine, under Nazi protection. It would probably not require a war, the Graf suavely explained, for the Bolsheviks knew well the German strength and their own impotence. All it needed was the friendly neutrality of France, and afterwards the two great peoples might divide the hegemony of the Continent, Germany taking the east as its sphere of influence and France the west—of course in a benevolent and constructive way. Britain had so much land overseas—surely Britain did not have to meddle in Europe!"

Lanny said he wished to return the hospitality of Graf Herzenberg and would like to invite Lili and him to see Marceline perform; they accepted and said they would bring Oskar, the son of Graf Herzenberg, an SS leutenant, who had recently become a member of the legation. The Graf tried to enlist Lanny as agent -

"The wretched imbecile Czechs, instead of abiding by their agreement with the Führer, were waging ideological war on him, threatening the excellent government which Father Tiso had set up in Slovakia with the Führer’s approval. The irresponsible British press was inciting them, regardless of the consequences to the peace of the world. Even now, with Madrid about to fall, the French demagogues were still denouncing Franco, and holding the menace of the Russian alliance over all Europe. It was the Jewish bankers of Paris, ..."

So he asked if Lanny could delay leaving Paris, or return and join them ... Lanny gave the same answer to them that he'd given Göring, he told them. Graf Herzenberg agreed to release the paintings in Chateau Belcour, even buy one to give Göring as a gift, perhaps. They proceeded to the Chanteclair, and Marceline had arranged their welcome. She danced with Lanny in midst of her program, and with Oskar Herzenberg who was taken with her. Lanny wondered if she had to learn again by experience as with Vittorio. 

Robbie and Lanny visited the de Bruyne family for a weekend. 

"Denis the elder was over eighty and was feeling his age—this had begun, so he said, in prison, though they had treated turn with courtesy and permitted him to purchase comforts. Trying to overthrow your government is an ancient and respectable practice in Europe, and only among the Nazis was it harshly dealt with."

Robbie Budd and his technical experts, brought over at behest of the French government, had discovered that French manufacture of planes wasn't in a good state, especially compared to Germany. 

"It was not merely that labor was in revolt and that sabotage was common; it was that so many of the manufacturers were incompetent. The factories were small, and fathers passed on the control to sons who were timid and old-fashioned in their ideas, afraid to spend money upon new developments. 

"One of the greatest dangers was the concentration of airplane manufacture in and about Paris. This would be fatal in wartime, and “decentralization” was endlessly talked about, but nothing was done. In the southwest of France were great numbers of quarries which offered excellent places for the concealment of aircraft manufacture; surveys had been made and plans drawn, but no steps had been taken to run power lines and railroads to these places. Also, and worst of all, was the neglect to promote the manufacture of motors; anybody could make planes in a hurry, but motors required foundries and machine tools, and France was a second-class nation where these were concerned."

The author's description here of the effect of nationalisation on the state of factories, specifically of air plane manufacturing plants, could be the take off for Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged! Here, though, the opposite side is immediately provided, in what Lanny has been told but Robbie wouldn't say, or admit. 

Robbie was upset because the French order wasn't coming through as expected. Denis Dr Bruyne had gone to see General Gamelin, who was very senior, who thought planes were excellent for bringing supplies to the soldiers in bunkers at the Maginot line, which did not extend to the sea since france depended on Belgian friendship, but General Gamelin couldn't conceive of planes as actual weapons of warfare. So Robbie would have to depend on Göring to keep his business running.
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Lanny told Robbie they might as well go to Berlin, Lanny driving via Belgium and arriving next night, so the experts went back to Newcastle with contracts, and Lanny drove with Robbie. He casually told Robbie about Reverdy Holdenhurst interested in investing, and Robbie said he'd like to meet him. 

"Lanny Budd’s life had settled into more or less of a routine. He stayed a while on the Riviera and then in Paris; he went to Germany, and then to England." 

He dressed for the part he played, met people, sent off reports from outside Germany every time, and eventually made a crossing of the Atlantic to make a report in person. 

"Every now and then Lanny would fall to wondering: how long would he be able to keep up this routine? He knew the old saying, the pitcher that goes too often to the well is broken at last. How long could he expect to continue this double life, and what would be the obstacle over which he would trip? Perhaps if he knew about it in advance, he might be able to sidestep it."

Arriving late at night at Adlon, where everybody knew them, Lanny found a scrap of paper under the coverlet.  He picked it up and read: “Achtung. Abhörapparate im Zimmer!” and showed it silently to Robbie. Obviously nazis knew which room they were in, and had it wired to hear every whisper, and they were being warned silently and covertly by some staff who weren't sympathetic in this to the nazis. 

So Lanny drove while Robbie conferred with his men in the car in the back, and they saw tanks maneuver in fields and Hitler youth March grimly singing about conquering the world. 
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"Returning to the hotel, Lanny stopped in the lobby, and so ran into an adventure. His path crossed that of a lady, a smallish, birdlike lady who moved quickly and glanced here and there as a bird does when it is picking up whatever it lives on; a lady who might have been thirty, and would have been younger if she had taken off her gold pince-nez. She was rather pretty, and wore a brown plaid coat of English tweed with a mink collar, welcome in the month of February on the flat lands which had once been the marshes of Brandenburg, and were still swept by icy gales from the Baltic and the snow-covered mountains to the north. 

"The lady’s alert eyes swept over a youngish-looking gentleman wearing a tweed overcoat and a Homburg hat, both from London. The eyes showed no signs of interest, but the gentleman stopped and exclaimed: “Well, well! Isn’t this Miss Creston?” 

"“It is,” replied the lady, and stopped. “But—” she began. 

"“Don’t you remember me?” That was very ill-bred indeed, but Lanny had had a rumpus with her the last time they had met, and he chose to tease her. 

"“You have me at a disadvantage,” replied the lady, with that firmness which was a part of her personality. 

"“I am the troglodyte,” said the creature. 

"“Oh! I remember. You are Mr.—Mr.—” Again Lanny waited, just to be mean. Then he said: “Budd, the art expert who lives in an ivory tower, and doesn’t care anything about politics or humanity or any of those ethical things.” 

"“I see that I offended you,” replied the lady, drawing herself up to what little height she had. “I am sorry.” 

"“Don’t spoil it all,” responded the other. “You impressed me greatly. Now I find you—of all places in the world—among the people upon whom you have declared war!” He said it with his best grin, and when he saw that she didn’t know quite how to take it, he was still more pleased. “You are staying at the Adlon?” he inquired. 

"“No, Mr. Budd; I am a mere writer, and nothing even approaching a plutocrat.” 

"“But here is the place for local color! Have you an engagement at the moment?” When she admitted that she hadn’t, he suggested: “Shall we sit down and improve our acquaintance? We were in the same room for only an hour, and most of the time we listened to other people.” 

"He led her to a couple of the heavy leather chairs which were not too close to others; and when they were seated he ventured: “You wanted to see this new world with your own eyes? I won’t ask you whether you are pleased with what you have seen. Some people change their opinions here, while others have them confirmed.” 

"“I am a person with some fixed principles, Mr. Budd.” 

"“I gathered that from our discussion in my friend Sophie’s drawing-room; and I was interested in what you said. Since then I have looked for your name in such magazines as I have seen, but I haven’t come upon it.” 

"“I happen to have a story in the current Bluebook.” 

"“Thank you for telling me. I’ll get it without fail.” 

"“I’m not sure if you’ll find it here in Berlin; and perhaps I’d better advise you to forget it. The story is called ‘The Troglodyte.’” 

"“Oh, how charming!” exclaimed the socially trained creature. “You mean that I have the honor of being in it?” 

"“We writers have to use the material which comes to us. But naturally, we change things; one character becomes a composite of many.” 

"“I dare say you have met more than one man who loves beauty and peace, and tries to keep himself aloof from the hatefulness he sees around him. Is the scene of your story the Cap d’Antibes?” 

"“It is Capri, which I have also visited.” 

"“But the villa you have described bears some resemblance to that of the Baroness de la Tourette?” 

"“In some details, possibly.” 

"“It may amuse you to hear that when my mother was discussing our little passage at arms, she predicted that the room and everything in it would appear in a story. She saw you making mental notes.” 

"“Explain to your mother, Mr. Budd, that writers have to live.” 

"“Dr. Samuel Johnson once remarked that he failed to see the necessity.” 

"“I know: but he went on living and so did the victim of his wit.”"

Laurel Creston had visited home of Sophie on Riviera along with her relatives, and lanny had been there with his family, Beauty and Marceline. He couldn't have talked to her honestly then, but she had fitted exactly the design Nina had in mind of someone he could find worth being his mate. 

"Said the man: “When I read ‘The Troglodyte’ am I going to find out how I fool myself?” 

"Said the woman: “If you’re really fooling yourself, you won’t recognize it.” 

"He laughed. “I have a friend who is a playwright, and has put me into a play several times, so he tells me; but I don’t think I should have recognized myself if I hadn’t been told in advance.” 

"“Well, you know what Robert Burns says on the subject. I won’t bore you by quoting it.” 

"“Perhaps you are the power that will gie me the giftie; and if so, I’ll promise to reward you liberally.” 

"“In what coin, Mr. Budd?” 

"“I’ve been trying to think what might be acceptable. The most valuable coin I possess is what I know about art. My mother was a painters’ model, and I knew painters and their work from as far back as I can remember. Then Marcel Detaze became my stepfather, and I watched him work and listened to his instructions during his greatest period. Now I earn my living as a student of paintings, whose judgment some of our collectors are willing to take. Does any of that interest you?” 

"“Very much, Mr. Budd.” 

"“Well, it occurs to me that you might be interested to travel through one or two of the great museums here in Berlin, and listen to some of those discourses by which I am accustomed to bewilder and charm our American Maecenases and Lorenzos, and cause them to part with their wealth. On one occasion I persuaded a Long Island heiress to exchange four hundred and eighty thousand cans of spaghetti with tomato sauce for a piece of canvas not much more than a foot square. It so happened that that surface had been painted by Jan van Eyck with a representation of the Queen of Heaven in her golden robes.” 

"“You wish to heap coals of fire upon my head, Mr. Budd?” 

"“No, I am offering to pour them into your ears. Would you consider an hour or two of my discourse as adequate compensation for that giftie of seeing myself as you see me?” 

"They made a date for the following afternoon."
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Furtwaengler called, Robbie and Lanny were to meet Göring next morning, but not for lunch, and they invited Dr. Horace Greeley Hjalmar Schacht, whom had been ousted from Reichsbank, his account of the state of economy had been honest. He now spoke about his replacement. "Dr. Walther Funk had risen in the world by the same method as Ribbentrop, a rich marriage." Funk had introduced Thyssen and co to nazis and got them to back them, and risen with them. Schacht was bitter. 

"Just before his recent dismissal he had been in consultation with Montagu Norman, Governor of the Bank of England, working out a plan to help the Jews who wanted to get out of Germany. They were to be allowed to take their money, but it would have to be used to purchase German imports in the country to which they went."

He lamented the state of the affairs now. 

"The worthy doctor lowered his voice and looked about him nervously; it was a practice so common in this Haupstadt that it had a special name—the Berliner Blick, the Berlin glance.

"“These pieces of paper fall due in the course of next year, and it means that the government will have no income then. What are we supposed to do?” 

"“A great many people fear that you may be forced into war, Dr. Schacht.” 

"“Nobody fears it more than I, Mr. Budd. The head of our state is taking the worst advice these days.” The speaker took another nervous glance, and then said: “I am a conservative man, I assure you. Many of my measures have been novel, but all have been practical steps designed to restore German economy to full production. That has been done, and now I feel that my usefulness to my native land is ended.”"

Schacht wasn't there to enjoy a luncheon, but to enquire about a job, and Robbie "said that American financiers ought to appreciate the abilities of the man who had managed to persuade Germany’s conquerors to lend her the billions of dollars with which to pay them reparations. Robbie said this without a trace of irony", and Schacht took it as a compliment,  they understood one another perfectly as men of the world. 

They met Göring, and Robbie had concern over German cheating on contract, but Göring insisted it was a part not included in the contract and was made in another private plant. Robbie said fine, he would be guided by this in future. Göring said he should talk to experts, and Robbie said he was willing.

"Lanny said he had a customer for one of the Canalettos at twenty-two thousand dollars, and Hermann said he was leaving it entirely to Lanny’s judgment. The money was to be deposited to Hermann’s account in a New York bank—something Hermann had arranged quite a while ago, and hadn’t seen fit to explain. Lanny had heard that the Nazi leaders were accumulating funds in Stockholm and Zurich, Buenos Aires and New York; he understood that it was a subject about which they wouldn’t care to talk, and he didn’t invite them to.

"Instead he asked the Reichsmarschall about his proposed trip to Italy, and mentioned the possibility that Lanny himself might be coming there on picture business. He told very good news from Paris; the collapse of the Reds in Spain was having a powerful effect, and the advocates of the Russian alliance were about at the end of their rope. Der Dicke had never told Lanny who his own agents in Paris were, but Lanny had met so many Nazis there that he could make a pretty good guess, and he named this one and that and gave good reports—in short, everything that would enable a semi-invalid to retire with his mind at peace."
...............................................................................


Lanny got a copy of Blue book by asking an old porter of the hotel, and read the story. It was sharp in humour, and he didn't see how it got past the publisher. He called for Miss Creston at her pension by walking, and they walked to the museum as he complimented her on the writing. He spoke to her about art and architecture of Berlin, of taste of Berlin and Prussia versus Germany, about various painters exhibited in the museum and what their art represented, and Miss Creston observed -"“But what sort of talk is this for an ivory-tower esthete? I don’t believe you are nearly so much of a troglodyte as you try to make yourself think, Mr. Budd!” Achtung, Lanny!"
...............................................................................


Robbie was frustrated after Göring left for Italy, because while the technical experts were polite they had no authority to negotiate and he was getting nowhere. He talked of going to London and asked Lanny, but Lanny preferred to stay on and possibly meet adi, conduct some business, and so on. He asked Lanny to take him on a drive, stop at a deserted place to check the trunk for hearing devices, and then said he wanted someone to get the part Göring had not given him access to, and was willing to pay a hundred thousand marks, if Lanny could contact one of his reds. Lanny said he didn't wish to risk it, and Robbie said Lanny would only have to ask the person to contact Robbie in Newcastle, that's all. 

Lanny saw Robbie off and thought of a way to have Bernhardt Monck get in touch with him if he were alive, and he called the Privatdozent to have an interview of Hitler's taste in art published, mentioning amongst other things the answer to comment by the interviewer that Lanny was making money. 

Lanny took Miss Creston to the museum again, and the National Gallery, and music concert, explaining various things in the process. 

"In short, Lanny was permitting himself to enjoy the company of a charming and intelligent lady, and the pleasure of making an impression upon her. The lady, for her part, could not have failed to be aware that this was an unusual man, and with her shrewd mind she had begun to realize that there was something mysterious about him. His Weltanschauung, as the Germans call it, appeared to be in a state of Verwirrung. He would express that lofty indifference to politics which had so exasperated her at their first meeting; but before long, in the course of a discussion of art or music, he would express opinions which seemed indisputably political. She was a lady who knew what good manners were, even though she didn’t always choose to have them, and now she did not challenge his remarks, but listened, and put this and that together, and wondered if it could be business that caused his extreme reticence. He told amusing stories about his rich clients—though never naming them. Were they all so intolerant of any political or economic heresy that an art expert had to alter his entire life pattern to please them?"

He spoke about his business in passing, and she wondered why he spoke of money, he didn't seem greedy, and why he made so much. He spoke about Marcel Detaze and the time Lanny had spent with him. Lanny mentioned a yacht turning up at Riviera and it's owner buying two Detazes, and Laurel Creston asked the name of the yacht, and remarked that the owner was her uncle. 

"She asked who had been on board, and he named several of the guests, persons whom she knew. He mentioned Lizbeth, but of course said nothing about the conspiracy of his mother and her friends, which would have been boorish of him. “A very lovely child,” he remarked; and the woman replied: “She ought to be more than that by now. I’m afraid she’s somewhat spoiled.” 

"“She adores her father,” Lanny countered, with his usual amiability. 

"“She must know that he is not a happy man. He would like to do something useful, but his desires exceed his capacities. That is true of all the members of our family, I think.” 

"“I don’t know,” said Lanny, gallantly. “If I had been asked about you, the first thing I should have said is that you know exactly what you can do, and are doing it.” 

"The woman smiled a brave little smile, and replied: “That means that you have read one of my short stories; but you have never seen the trunkful of manuscripts at home—to say nothing of all the ashes!”"

Lanny's article was published in Hitler's own paper, and he mailed copies to various contacts, Robbie, Göring, Kurt, Forrest Quadratt, and also Laurel Creston. He was expecting Bernhardt Monck to contact, and he did. They met with the usual precautions,  and Monck asked if Lanny could leave Germany immediately so as to carry out an important task, that of getting out information about the exact terms set by Hitler to Czechoslovakia to avoid him taking it. Lanny said he could travel and return, and Monck said he had to commit the information to memory. 

"“One: Complete neutralization of the Czech frontiers. Two: Adhesion of Czechoslovakia to the Anti-Comintern pact. Three: Withdrawal from the League of Nations. Four: Drastic reduction of military effectives. Five: Surrender of most of the Czech gold reserves. Six: Czechs to furnish raw materials to redeem Czech currency now in the Sudetenland—that currency is now worthless, you understand. Seven: Sudeten industries to have full access to Czech markets. Eight: No new Czech industries to compete with them. Nine: Czech anti-Semitic legislation conforming to the Nuremberg decrees. Ten: Dismissal of all state employees objectionable to Germany. Eleven: Permission for all Germans in Czechoslovakia to wear Nazi badges and carry the Nazi flag. That’s all.”"

They discussed Robbie's job and Monck said he'd try, and lanny said he'd be back in three days after going out of Germany to send out the information. In Adlon, he saw Pietro Corsatti, and was less than cautious in speaking with him and arranging to drive with him to Polish corridor. They were looking for the family Grynspan of the parents of the young man who had shot Edouard vom Rath in Paris, crazed by the plight of his family and community. That was the spark that resulted in the Kristallnacht. 

"These hordes of Polish Jews had been gathered from all over Germany in the previous autumn. Many had never been in Poland and didn’t know a word of the language; but because their parents had come from that land, they were Polish, and were loaded into cattle cars and transported to the border and dumped across with only such possessions as they had been able to carry in their hands or on top of their heads. Poland didn’t want them, and wouldn’t admit them into the country; they were existing in the most incredible destitution in a sort of No Man’s Land along the border—always the Polish side, because armed Nazis marched on the German side of the barbed wire, ready to shoot anyone who ventured across. The exiles had sheltered themselves in tents, or in hastily built sod huts, many of them half underground, and roofed with poles, old boards, and scraps of tarpaper and tin. Where they got food the travelers had no chance to ask."

The description above is unique, in that most other descriptions of Jews transported or ordered away from their homes, town, neighbourhood are about either a ghetto or a concentration camp, not about refugees allowed to survive in tents and sheds across a barbed wire patrolled by Nazi guards. One has to wonder if it is factual, and did all these people get murdered so no memoir mentions this, or was it the naive imagination supplying the plight in the then absence of precise information about the far more inhuman, ghastly reality, when the author wrote and published it in midst of the war? 

Lanny requested Pietro Corsatti to not mention him to anyone, not mention having had company on this trip at all, and Pietro agreed. Lanny went to his room, in the hotel in Bydgoszcz where they had stopped for the purpose of Pietro sending off his story, and wrote his report, sending a copy to Rick mailed in Nina's name. Rick would give it to an MP who would expose it in the parliament. 

Lanny found near Kartuzy the suitable estate he was looking for, having told adi he he had done so to settle down, when he needed him to tell how long before the region would be German, and knowing they would check on the claim. He spoke to the owner who was anxious to sell and didn't wish to mention it was due to fear of nazis. He was retired from military. 

"The fire of combat still smoldered in his eyes. The Poles were a peace-loving people, he declared, but proud, and by no means to be trampled on. They had constructed a magnificent new port at the foot of this Corridor, and meant to keep it. They had seen what happened to the Czechs, and it was surely not going to happen to Poles—not if the present speaker had to take down his lance and ride forth on the great-grandson of the charger he had ridden all the way to Lemberg, which he spelled Lwow and pronounced Lvuff. ... The spirit of the army was magnificent, and the Nazis, if they ventured an attack, would get the shock of their lives; but of course the holding of a district so advanced would depend upon prompt support from the West. Did Monsieur Budd—they were speaking French, never the hated German—believe that the French would appreciate the importance of prompt attack? Lanny replied that it was difficult to say; the Maginot Line was not planned for attack, and the attitude of Belgium was problematical."

He talked about Danzig or Gdansk, now Gdynia, and how nazis were making it impossible. Lanny took his leave, saying he was looking at other estates, and drove back, listening to Beethoven played on the radio. He thought of Laurel Creston. 

"A mass of human experience has been stored up in art, and it has been discussed and commented upon in millions of books and billions of conversations; this is called “culture,” and Miss Creston had some and wanted more. She had taken to coming frequently into a P.A.’s imagination with her questions."

But if he went on meeting her, the pension guests and servants would ask if it was the guy in papers, and wonder about her reaction to their leader being not in harmony. She was here to gather material for writing, and her published work would come under Nazi scrutiny. There was nowhere he could meet her without risking blowing his cover. 

"There simply could be no more of Laurel Creston in Lanny Budd’s life—so he decided, once for all."
...............................................................................


Lanny visited Fürstin Donnerstein, and got news about the top nazis and more. France wasn't hurrying prosecution of the Grynspan boy, and Hilde said that at the funeral of Edouard vom Rath his father had told off adi who as a consequence had stalked off in a fury, not delivering the funeral address. The aristocrat father had blamed him for the murder of his son caused by the atrocities perpetrated that drove young Grynspan crazy, he had said.

He called Heinrich Jung who wanted to invite him and show him off to his party associates, and Lannyvisited his home. Heinrich was honest, not living larger than his means, and the family appreciated gifts he brought. And he got the expectations of party associates about ruling the world soon enough as soon as the leader had got Prague, Poland, Ukraine and all the mineral wealth. 

Lanny met Hess who took him to lunch at Horcher', the place frequented by the nazis, for lunch, and got a private room. Lanny told him about what he had learned of parapsychology experiments being conducted at the Duke university.  

" ... in hundreds of thousands of tests it was being proved that one person could really tell the face of cards which another person was turning up in another room. Some persons could even tell what cards were going to be turned up before they were turned." 

They talked about Göring and others. "Göring and Hess were fairly close together in their views of policy; they were the conservatives among the group surrounding the Führer, and wanted him to go slow and to conciliate Britain and France, at least for the present. The radicals and activists were Goebbels and Ribbentrop, and the hatred of Göring and Hess for this pair was positively poisonous; they would have been at one another’s throats if it had not been for the fact that the Führer needed all four, and managed them like a trainer with a cageful of wild animals."

Lanny asked him about the estate he called his future home, where he had gone for a second look, he said; would the prices come down? 

"“I am not so sure the price will come down,” remarked the Deputy Führer. “There are a great many Germans who have the same idea as you, and are planning to move into both the Corridor and the Danzig district the moment it becomes a part of the Reich.”"

Lanny asked him about possibility of a deal between Germany and Russia, and Hess thought it would be the greatest calamity in history, since he felt English, born in Cairo and having grown up in English community in Egypt. Hess encouraged Lanny to meet adi and tell him what he'd hear from Lanny much better than from his number three. 

Lanny kept thinking of Laurel Creston despite coming to the conclusion,  over and over, that it wasn't safe keeping on meeting her. He went to the bibliothek to check her up as author, and found her stories, and read them, enjoying the sharp humour. Then he returned to Adlon to check for messages, from Monck or Hess. 

Berlin press was railing against Prague for insulting Father Tiso set up by nazis to rule Slovakia which Hitler had split from them, to prove that there was no such thing as Czechoslovakia, it was a lie. British press published the terms Hitler had set Prague, and nazis now must know there was a spy amonst them. Lanny had been planning to attend an evening do at Graf Stubendorf's Berlin townhouse, and the top nazis would be there. He decided to be inconspicuous and instead called Emil Meissner who was happy to hear from him, and invited him to dine with his family. Lanny talked to him as son of Budd Erling to a professional of military, about matters related, and Emil was happy to discuss with charts and more. Lanny stored it in memory, useful for Rick and Alfy. 

He got a note from monck on his return and met him the next evening. Monck said getting the supercharger was possible, and timeline was Saturday so it wouldn't be discovered till Monday, but it was size of two suitcases side by side, so getting it out was the problem. Monck had thought of taking it apart, so it was mostly pipes, and dress up as a chauffeur to drive a car out with a wealthy foreigner who'd say they'd engaged him for the trip. Lanny didn't think his own going was safe, and nor would Pietro Corsatti or Zoltan Kertezsi do - Pietro might not understand keeping it a secret, and Zoltan Kertezsi might not be in France, might be in U.S.. 

Then Lanny thought of Laurel Creston and explained to Monck what and how he needed to do it, without mentioning Lanny. He told Monck he would give the final say the next day, but that morning he had a visitor bringing him an invitation from adi to see him, so he prepared himself and went at two. Adi wanted to know what was being said in London and Paris, where Lanny had recently been. Adi was keen on getting Schneider et al on his side, and gave figures of growth of economy for evidence in terms of greater dividends and investment by the big industry in Germany. 

Adi asked about the British attitude, and Lanny said the British were sceptical of his intentions regarding Czechoslovakia and Poland, which adiclaimed was about rights of German people to return to their homeland and others not making propaganda against Germany. Lanny told him he had visited the Polish corridor recently. 

"“Have you bought that property you spoke of?”"

Lanny told him about the property, and about what the owner said about people of poland defending Poland. 

"“They do the Polish people a poor service who encourage them in such vain delusions. I am being patient and polite with the Poles, because I know that they are merely pawns, being used by stronger and more cunning powers. But if the only effect is to bring an increase of insults and humiliations, the blood-guilt will not be found on my hands.”

"“I have not told him that I wouldn’t consent to live in Poland, but I have hinted that I am concerned as to the immediate future.” 

"“He may sow one more crop in Poland,” replied the Führer of the Germans; “but I think you may safely reckon that he will reap it in Germany. He has nothing to fear, for we are not robbers, and shall treat our Polish minority with even-handed justice—provided, of course, that they obey our laws and keep their mouths shut.”"

Lanny mentioned that everyone was wary about Germany making deal with Russia, which aid reacted to vehemently. 

"I tell them that I am trying to defend western civilization from the foulest scourge that has appeared in modern history; and I invite them to help me. If they are willing to do it, all right, the world is safe; but if they are trying to sell out western civilization, and it is a question of who is going to collect the price, then let them tremble in their boots at the thought that I may collect ahead of them. As you say in your wild West, I will shoot more quickly than they.”"

This American slang brought the conversation to Berghof where adi had collection of Karl May, and Lanny mentioned Madame Zyszynski and the seances since she had visited Berghof. Lanny talked about the experiments at Duke university, extra sensory perception and psychokinetic phenomena. Adi spoke about his burdens in politics, and he was interrupted by a message that Hacha had deposed Tiso, which set him off, shouting for Keitel, Rudi and Ribbentrop. By the time they arrived Lanny had heard enough and took his leave, which made him good in their books. Lanny met Monck late at night and gave a go ahead for Monck to try getting help of Laurel Creston.
...............................................................................


Lanny coached Monck carefully, and Monck called Laurel and spoke to her asking permission to visit as a fan of her work, and he spoke quoting various things from literature and history, until she understood when he asked about a walk, and then he told her about his life, Trudi, Spain and more, as they walked. She asked questions when he outlined his need of escape and understood his plan to be her chauffeur driving her to Holland, and remarked about him zeroing on her for help just from reading her works. 

"“I admired the skill with which you managed to convey your ideas to me in that pension, without saying a word that anyone there could understand.”"

Lanny got a note from Monckto say that the plan was on, and he was done with Berlin but decided he couldn't leave at the same time, so he invited Furtwaengler and his wife out to provide himself with an alibi, with a round of night clubs after dinner and opera, and dropping them in early hours, so they asked him to stay over. Sunday was when Laurel Creston was travelling to Holland. Lanny asked Furtwaengler if Göring could see him before he left, since the invasion of Czechoslovakia must keep him busy, but Furtwaengler said he would find time, and called on Monday morning to say he was invited for lunch. Lanny met Göring, talked art business and more, and got ready to leave, having received a post card with a Dutch stamp talking about aunt Sally. He drove to Holland, and kept on thinking of Laurel Creston. 

"At the Hook of Holland Lanny went on board the long narrow nightboat, very comfortable, very safe. He was in a free land now, and shut himself up in his stateroom and set up his little portable and went to work. He wrote that Hitler had definitely made up his mind to take Danzig and the Corridor, and that the time would be not longer than six months. He wrote that Hitler would probably force the issue and take the whole western half of Poland; the Führer’s former statement that he wanted nobody but Germans was now forgotten, as he was showing in the case of the Czechs. The P.A. wrote that Hitler was seriously thinking of some sort of deal with the Russians, possibly giving them the eastern half of Poland and thus beating the others “to the draw.” He added that the high-up Nazis were dubious about the outcome of these ventures, and were salting away money and property abroad; but the Führer’s will was implacable, and when it came to a showdown not one would refuse to obey him."

The passage took the whole night, and it was stormy.

"For this was the night, or rather the small hours of the morning, when the death warrant of the Czech Republic was signed.

"Poor old President Hacha! After the military honors and the flowers and the box of candy, he and his minister were taken into Hitler’s splendid office and had the document set before them. The Führer made a brief speech; this was the agreement, and all the visiting pair had to do was to write their names on it. Bohemia and Moravia were to become a part of the Third Reich, and Prague was to be occupied the next morning. If Hacha and his minister refused to sign, the thousand bombers would fly and the city would be wiped out of existence. That was all; take it or leave it.

"After that speech, Hitler wrote his name and then left the room, bequeathing the elderly invalid to the tender mercies of Ribbentrop and Göring. The two Czechs protested against the outrage, and Göring’s answer was that the air force already had its orders; it was to fly at six A.M. There was the document; sign. Göring held out the pen, and when the horrified president shrank from it, Göring pursued him around the table. Sign, or the bombs will soon be falling.

"Hacha fell into a faint and had to have restoratives. The thoughtful Führer had ordered his physicians to be on hand, and the sick man was revived. He declared that he could not sign without consulting his Cabinet. All right, there was a direct telephone line—the thoughtful Führer had seen to that, also, and the president might do his consulting at once. The president collapsed again, and again was revived. Such was the duel of wills going on all night, while Lanny Budd was being rolled by the great waves which started in the Arctic Ocean and came sweeping down the coast of Norway, and to the foot of the North Sea as if into a funnel. It was half-past four in the morning when the almost-dead man wrote his name on the death warrant of his country, and already German troops were crossing the border in a dozen places. While Lanny was leaving Harwich they were entering Prague, and when he got to London the extra editions of the newspapers were announcing that the Führer himself was on his way to make a triumphal entry into the Czech capital."
...............................................................................


Lanny called Rick from Harwich and Rick appeared as Lanny settled in Savoy, where they could talk without having to drive. There were no hearing devices, and they could mourn together. 

"It so happened that the sudden death of Prague fell at the same time as the last agonies of Spain; in these black hours traitors were tearing that republic to pieces, and starving, disease-ridden Madrid was to collapse in a couple of weeks."

Lanny called Ceddy at the foreign office, and they would meet for dinner, with Albany along to hear what Lanny had. He suggested Lanny might wish to hear the speech in the parliament, which Lanny did just after Hitler made his speech on radio from Prague, assuring Czech people that Germany was the right authority to take care of Bohemia and Moravia; the British PM spoke of people's desire for peace, signal to Hitler that he could repeat this. 

"Lanny went back to his hotel to dress for dinner; and there he turned on the radio and heard that Hungarian troops had crossed the borders of the Carpatho-Ukraine and were driving disorganized Czech troops before them. A new Hungarian government was expected to take power, one that was pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic, and the report was that Hitler had agreed to let this government have that portion of Czechoslovakia which was immediately adjacent to Hungary."

Lanny dined at the Carlton Club with Ceddy and Gerald Albany, and they wanted to hear what he had heard in Berlin from his meeting the leaders. 

"All three of the Nazi masters wanted to be friends with Britain, wanted it cordially and genuinely, but only on the terms that Germany must be free to take what she wanted in parts of the world that did not concern Britain. Danzig, the Corridor, Memel, and after that colonies—but not colonies of Britain; no—only those of small nations like Belgium, Holland, Portugal, which had more than they could use and certainly more than they could defend."

"Lanny couldn’t say: “I was shocked at the position which the Prime Minister took this afternoon. It is practically turning Hitler loose.” Instead he remarked, tactfully: “I wonder if anyone has called the Prime Minister’s attention to the significance of Hungary’s move today?”

"“Hungary is certainly not invading any part of Czechoslovakia without Hitler’s permission, and if the reports are true that Count Teleki is taking over the government, that settles the matter, for he is to all practical purposes a Nazi. I noticed in the last few days that some of the Berlin papers suddenly stopped referring to the district as the Carpatho-Ukraine and took to calling it by its right name, Carpathian Ruthenia. That is enormously significant—in fact it seems to me the most important development of years, from your point of view.”

"“You mean,” said Gerald, “that Hitler is giving up his scheme for an independent Ukraine at the expense of Russia?” 

"“Much more than that. If you look at the map you see that eastern Czechoslovakia is a long finger pointing straight into Russia and only a few miles short of that goal. Carpathian Ruthenia is the tip of that finger, and it affords Hitler a means of getting into Russia without crossing Poland. If he gives it up to Hungary, it means that he isn’t going into Russia, and wants to assure Russia of the fact. Stalin is afraid to death of Hitler, but he’s not in the least bit afraid of Teleki, and what the deal means is that Hitler is working behind the scenes for some arrangement with Stalin, just as he intimated to me he might do. Get the drop on Britain and France, was his idea.”

Ceddy and Albany would have given the air that the ministry knew it all, normally, but this was too serious. 

"Lanny Budd, who had known Ceddy since boyhood, thought he had never seen him in such a state of mental upset. The whole policy of Britain had been based on the program that Hitler was to do his expanding to the eastward; and now he was letting the Hungarians close a gate across the highway."

Lanny visited Wickthorpe and played with Frances, and paid compliments to her half a year old half brother, Honorable James Ponsonby Cavendish Cedric Barnes, Viscount Masterson, grandson of J. Paramount Barnes. 
...............................................................................


"Lanny had given four mail addresses to his friend Monck: the Adlon, Bienvenu, Newcastle, and his bank in London. Now he received a letter at this last address, reading: “I am sailing on the steamer Atlantic. The Defregger is in good condition. Your lady friend is a charming person. She is at the Excelsior Hotel. Braun.”

"He found himself thinking of Laurel Creston in a new way. Hitherto she had been a clever writer and good company—especially as a listener to lectures on art. But now she had been put to a real test, and had stood it; now she was a comrade, even something of a heroine!

Lanny hadnt heard of the hotel, it was in

"Kensington district: He called it, and apparently the guest had to be summoned from upstairs; he had quite a wait before he heard her voice. “Your friend from Berlin,” he said—no use using names! “What made you run away so suddenly?”"

She said "you had run away first". He invited her for lunch in old English style at a restaurant in strand, instructing her how to get there. He was tempted to quote her the poetry he'd taught Monck to recite to her. She told him that she was returning to Germany and wanted to understand it. He told her about his art business, and took her to see Tate gallery. 

Lanny called Robbie on transatlantic telephone and told him in code that the man was on the way, and he'd be there soon. He stored his car in the garage of the hotel and went to N.Y., and called Baker who instructed him to call in three hours, and then told him to fly to Washington D.C. and meet him at night. 

Lanny talked with the President about the developing crisis, and FDR spoke of his need to deal with isolationist tendency of his people. He talked of two years that elections were after, and lanny said he didn't have that long. Lanny talked about the British PM whose speech in his constituency, questioning Hitler's behaviour and saying nobody should take it for granted that they could assume British would accept anything just to avoid war, however much they desired peace, had been reassuring for FDR. 

""Oddly enough, it wasn’t the fate of Prague which moved him to protest, but a small block of territory at the eastern tip of Slovakia which separated Poland from Hungary and gave Hitler access to Rumania and then into Russia if he wanted it.”"

They spoke again of need to wake up U.S. and Lanny suggested FDR talk to people, and was asked for a draft, and to check with the President before leaving for Europe. Lanny wrote and sent it via address to Baker before he flew to N.Y. and called Robbie, who asked him to come to Newcastle. 

They talked in private about the supercharger, delivered by Monck to Robbie personally in N.Y., and Robbie had sent it with experts to another facility in another state in Midwest, so when it was in place after a year there was no way of him being connected. Lanny returned to N.Y. and sold the Canaletto he had brought out of Germany to a client Zoltan Kertezsi had knownfor a decade longer than him, and the two were invited to stay for lunch. 

When Lanny returned to N.Y. to his hotel there was a letter forwarded from Newcastle with just a number, and lanny called Monck asking him to meet, picked him up and drove. He asked him how it was managed, and having told Lanny about the supercharger part, Monck spoke about Laurel Creston. He told Lanny she had refused to keep the car as she was originally proposed, and after selling it, had kept only a small part for expenses towards London and travel to Berlin, and given the rest to Monck for the cause. 

"“Well, I’ll be damned!” remarked the son of Budd-Erling. “I didn’t suppose she knew anything about the cause.” 

"“I don’t think she did when she started; aber, Herrschaft!—she surely did when we got to London. She sat in the back seat of that car for about twelve hours altogether and shot questions at me out of a machine gun; first about the underground and how it worked—I couldn’t tell her much, but I told what I could; ...."
 Monck had told her about the various left factions, social democrats, history of decades of their differences, and more. 

"“It was a pleasure to answer, because she got what you said. She wanted the names of some books to read, and she wanted to write them down, but I wouldn’t let her until we had got out of Germany. I actually believe she intends to get them and read them.” 

"“Haven’t you known women who get books and read them?” 

"“Not often; as a rule they just want to be able to say they have read them. But this is a fine girl, and you ought to see more of her.” 

"“I thought maybe you had that in mind when you gave me her address in London. I asked her to lunch at Simpson’s.” 

"“What I had in mind,” said the ex-Capitán, bluntly, “was that you might ask her to marry you.”"

They talked about Lanny's difficulties if he married, and Monck pointed out that his own wife stuck with him, it was enough that he was faithful. 

"“Trudi sticks by me, Genosse."

Lanny thought over it all, and again decided he couldn't see a way, his duty was first and he couldn't risk exposure or doubt. While in U.S. he needed to find out what the Nazi agents were up to: "what the agents of Hitler were doing now in Mexico and Central and South America revealed what he meant to do after he had finished with Poland and the Ukraine and the Balkans."

Lanny called Forrest Quadratt and was invited to his home to meet a U.S. senator,  “Bob” Reynolds, from North Carolina. He was propagating isolationism. 

"“America for Americans” was his slogan, and his special phobia was “aliens”; he wanted to overcome “alien influence” which was seeking to undermine his native land. Apparently he didn’t think of Quadratt as an alien, and when in his paper he urged members of the German-American Bund to subscribe, he was trying to convert aliens into good Americans."

Lanny suggested he notice that Hitler had begun with a positive approach of promise of economic betterment for people, and purely negative politics wouldn't work; the senator couldn't see how he could promise, much less give, anything more than people in U.S. already had with FDR's New Deal. 

"When the statesman took his departure the host remarked, with a smile: “You spoiled his evening, Budd. He has become conservative, and can’t bear to say or hear anything impolite about money. He is a friend of Mrs. Evalyn Walsh McLean, of Washington, who owns the biggest diamond in the world and wears it on her bosom at cocktail parties.”"

Lanny asked Quadratt for a favour. 

"“I should like to meet Henry Ford. I understand that his wife is interested in paintings and it would be a valuable connection for me.”"

Quadratt suggested Lanny take him, and lanny agreed. Back at the hotel he had a note from monck and picked him up. Monck had been paid by Robbie and asked Lanny to keep most of the money for him, keeping only what he needed to pay off back in Germany and a bit for his wife. Lanny said he'd invest it in Budd Erling stock and leave a note alongside his will in his father's safe about the amount to be paid to Tiergarten, code for Monck for Robbie, in case of anything happening to Lanny. 
...............................................................................


Upton Sinclair describes Forrest Quadratt who accompanies Lanny on a driving journey from N.Y., presumably to Michigan, to see Henry Ford. Whether this was a real person is not clear, and more likely it fits a type all too prevalent, especially when the author says the following, except for the Kaiser bit:-

"Prior to 1917, he had labored tirelessly to keep America from coming in, and after that he had given the Fatherland as much help as was consistent with keeping out of jail. But it had all been in vain, and for the past twenty years Quadratt had been scolding at history. He had written an elaborate defense of his cousin, the Kaiser, based on intimate knowledge, since he had been a frequent visitor at Doorn." 

Forrest Quadratt hated the British with vehemence for their insistence, after they had made their own empire, that status quo be maintained; he had said that Germany wanted nothing in the western hemisphere. Lanny smiled inwardly. 

"After a while he brought up the subject of South America, and remarked that from his point of view Eastern and Western Hemispheres were geographical terms, having nothing to do with political or economic realities. “As a matter of fact,” said he, “Argentina is about the same distance from New York as from Berlin, and the bulge of Brazil and the bulge of Africa have brought it about that there is more air traffic with Germany than with North America. The greater part of the population of South America is made of ignorant and besotted Indians, and what culture the continent has is Catholic and reactionary. I have always considered that South America offers the best field for German expansion, and many of my friends agree. There doesn’t have to be any fighting—all we have to do is to let the Germans alone, and they will soon own both Argentina and Brazil, because of their superior organizing ability.” 

"So after that it wasn’t necessary for Quadratt to go on lying any longer. He said that all Germany wanted was free and fair opportunity. Already most of South America was covered by a network of German airlines, and they were all carrying Nazi propaganda literature, in German and Italian, Spanish and Portuguese and English; also picture pamphlets for the Indians who couldn’t read. Lanny knew the shrewd little doctor who directed this work, and he said that it was the first time in history that the science of mass psychology and the techniques of modern advertising and promotion had been applied to the spreading of a political system."

They arrived early,  saw the plant with tourists, and met Henry Ford, who disliked interference in his factory, had bought all stock back, and had never allowed labour unions until the New Deal was forcing him. 

"So, when friends of Germany came to tell him how it was done, he listened gladly, and when they asked him for jobs he made room for them. He had a grandson of the Kaiser on his staff, and one of his engineers was Fritz Kuhn, founder and head of the German-American Bund. As a result his plants swarmed with Nazis, and so did the city of Detroit and its surrounding towns.

"In one of the early panics a group of Wall Street banks had sought to lend money to Henry Ford on terms which might have enabled them to take his company away from him. From that day on he had hated all bankers, and because someone had told him they were Jews, he hated Jews. He had carried on a crusade against them, and reprinted a grotesque invention, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. This had hurt business, so Henry had been persuaded to retract and apologize; but he hadn’t really changed his mind, and that was one more reason why he admired the Nazis, and listened to their shrewd agents who whispered into his ear that what was needed for America was a pure native hundred per cent movement, combining all the other groups which were flourishing throughout the country—the Ku Klux, the Black Legion, the Silver Shirts, the Crusader Whiteshirts, the American Liberty League, the Anglo-Saxon Federation—this last the creation and pet of Henry’s own editor and radio propagandist, William J. Cameron. There was a “Ford radio hour,” and for some fifty minutes every Sunday evening, music lovers listened to Mozart and Beethoven, and in the middle of it they gnashed their teeth for six minutes while Mr. Cameron’s rasping voice propounded a worm’s-eye view of their country’s social problems.

"Henry had to have rubber for automobile tires—five to each car. He was laying out an enormous plantation in Brazil, and for that he needed everything from steamships to lead pencils for the teachers who were going to teach the Indian children how to write. Also he was experimenting with artificial rubber, a complicated matter."

Forrest Quadratt introduced Lanny in between conversation lulls as an intimate friend of Hitler who frequented Berghof by invitation and stayed, a son of Budd of Budd-Erling, an art expert, and stepson of Marcel Detaze, and Ford mentioned his wife had a collection. Lanny expressed interest, and Ford jumped up saying he'd take them to see it. Mrs Ford was impressed by lanny and asked if they would like to stay for a pot luck dinner. They talked politics after dinner, about which Nazi candidates were viable to run in U.S.. Forrest Quadratt took Lanny to meet one next day, a radio priest named Coughlin who had made money through his listeners sending him dollar bills. 

"Step by step the reverend orator had established a radio network; also he had bought a tract of land, and built this shrine, together with all the accessories—a garage to accommodate the pilgrims, an inn to lodge them, a restaurant and several hotdog stands to feed them, and souvenir shops where they could buy things to send home and prove that they had actually accomplished the pilgrimage. “We manage things better than they ever did at Mecca, or Canterbury, or Lourdes,” remarked Quadratt.

"A man of hatred amounting almost to frenzy; a man who could build a church in the name of the gentle Jesus, and stand in the pulpit and rave for an hour, calling for the blood of those whose ideas he hated and feared. “Rest assured we will fight you in Franco’s way, if necessary. Call this inflammatory, if you will. It is inflammatory. But rest assured we will fight you and we will win.” .... America for Americans, and let us kick out Roosevelt and his Jew Deal and put an end to “the poppycock of democracy”—the holy father’s own phrase.

"Quadratt had come on business, so he sat without interrupting while the other told of various books he had written under pen names and had published through his camouflaged press in New Jersey, and of new sources of information and propaganda devised by the tireless Dr. Goebbels in Berlin. Quadratt had brought along a brief case full of documents and clippings, with passages especially marked for the editor-priest. Some of this interested the latter so much that he invited Quadratt to make them into articles—on the usual terms, as he quietly mentioned."

They visited a meeting of another one, Gerald Smith, where Forrest Quadratt invited Lanny to the podium but Lanny declined. 

"... gospel of “Reverend Smith,” as his followers called him. It was the whole Nazi creed of hate, complete to the smallest detail, but translated from German into Middle Western with a touch of the South. It was preaching in the style of the old-time camp-meeting, where people were used to shouting “Amen!” and “Come to Jesus!” and, when they got really going, to rolling in the aisles or “talking in tongues.” When Reverend Smith got warmed up, he bellowed in a voice which put the amplifier out of business; he took off his coat and then he tore open his collar—a ceremonial of seizure by the spirit. Perspiration streamed down his face, and while he mopped it with a handkerchief in one hand he held the other aloft with fist clenched, threatening the enemies of the Lord Jesus Christ.

"The whole performance took Lanny back a matter of fifteen years, to the enormous Bürgerbraukeller where he had listened for the first time to a two-hour tirade of Schicklgruber. ... here in Detroit was the same thing, with few changes and all of them superficial."

Lanny had asked in Munich, is this the German Mussolini, and now he asked

"“Is this the American Hitler?” ... “It seems to me he has everything it takes; he understands the American masses.” 

"“I agree with you,” said Forrest Quadratt. “I am backing him for the role, and you’ll be interested to know that some pretty big outfits are backing him to the limit.”"

Forrest Quadratt accompanied Lanny on his business visiting clients on the route back through Cincinnati where relatives of Sophie lived who Lanny had met when they visited her on the Riviera, and Forrest bragged a little about the sums he received from his German bosses through various sources, amounting to several thousand a year regularly and a few more occasionally.  They drove through coal mining region of Virginia and Forrest Quadratt expressed disdain at the thought of the poor they saw having a say in democracy.  

Forrest Quadratt asked Lanny why he had separated from Irma, and lanny responded with the gulf between temperament of art world versus that of fashion; Forrest revealed that his wife, a gentle and excellent woman, was part Jewish, and he had thought it wouldn't make any difference, but it did, and now he was estranged from not only her but his two sons as well. Lanny had sympathy,  but Forrest went on to talk of women of N.Y. providing him entertainment. 

"“The only trouble is they take it so damned seriously! I sometimes think the greatest service we Nazis have rendered to the German people is in teaching the Mädchen to take love-making as a matter of course.” 

"“It certainly saves a lot of bother,” remarked the much-traveled art expert. “But I wonder how you are going to patch up that problem with the Catholics.” 

"“Oh, pouff!” exclaimed the author of Eros Unbound, with a sudden gesture of the hand. “We will blow them out of our way in the first week when we take power!”"
...............................................................................


Lanny visited Hansi and Bess and the rest of the Robin family, and then Robbie said he'd received communication about the Oriole having arrived and Holdenhurst wishing to visit Robbie if it were convenient. So Lanny left N.Y., and drove to Newcastle to be amongst those welcoming and entertaining the Oriole set, including guests of Holdenhurst and Lizbeth, from the time they arrived, through a continuous round of parties where they met everybody, the Budd family and clan and Newcastle club and more. 

Throughout it became Lanny's duty to entertain Lizbeth and everyone conspired to put them together, and lanny did, but while she was interested in all he said she knew little, and needed him to explain. He could have mentioned meeting Laurel Creston but caution made him refrain from doing so. 

"Nor did Lanny fail to note that this girl liked to be with him and was willing to listen to him talk as long as he would condescend; she was a ripe peach hanging on the bough, and he could guess that at the lightest touch she would drop into his hand. He looked at her and appreciated her loveliness, and was not unaware of the warm currents which ran over him at the thought of her. But he had made up his mind that his job came first and the rest nowhere, and when they had finished a dance he turned her over to the next applicant instead of proposing a stroll onto the veranda."

Business conference between Robbie and Holdenhurst included the three sons of Robbie, and questions from Holdenhurst showed his business acumen. Robbie had him see plant and papers, no secrets, and no time limits. 

"Reverdy Johnson Holdenhurst was prepared to sign up to purchase two million dollars’ worth of Budd-Erling preferred stock, with which would go a bonus of an equal amount of common. He would pay for it over a period of four years in semi-annual installments. The purchase would be made in the name of forty-two different persons, including his wife, his two sons and one daughter, and an assortment of nieces, nephews, cousins and pensioners of himself and wife. The agreement would have to be signed by all these persons, and separate blocks of stock of varying sizes would be made out in their names and so registered. 

"That was as far as the purchaser needed to go into the matter; but he had been impressed by Robbie’s frankness and explained the basis of this strange procedure, which was his objection to the income tax, and especially to the system of surtaxes in the higher brackets. This objection was a matter of principle, since the purpose of these taxes was to destroy the private fortunes upon which the progress and prosperity of America had been based. The president of Budd-Erling had exactly the same idea, so they talked out their hearts on the subject. Reverdy explained that the stock dividends would be paid to the various family members, each of whom would keep the money in a separate bank account; each was under an agreement of honor with the head of the family that he or she did not touch this money except to invest it when and as directed. If Reverdy had received all this income himself, he would have had to pay a surtax as high as eighty-two per cent, which was practically confiscation; but by this method of distribution in advance of death the surtaxes were in some cases avoided entirely and in all cases were kept to the lower brackets; moreover, in the event of Holdenhurst’s dying, there would be no inheritance taxes to pay, and not even executor’s fees.

"The skipper grinned as he reported that he had changed the registration of the Oriole; it had ceased to be a pleasure yacht and become a trading vessel. He, his wife, his two sons and one daughter owned it in partnership, and each year the father played at getting the better of diamond and pearl dealers who thought they knew it all. They were frequently in need of cash, whereas Reverdy needed nothing; so he came back from the voyage with an assortment of valuable stones locked in the safe in his cabin. There was a lot there now, and dealers would come to Baltimore and buy them, and Reverdy would make a profit. Of course it wasn’t enough to cover the cost of the yachting trip—that wasn’t the idea. The extremely bright idea was that the costs of maintaining and operating the yacht became a business loss each year, and thus served to reduce the incomes of father and mother, daughter and sons, and put them into lower surtax brackets!"

Robbie was so impressed he asked the name of Reverdy's lawyer, and revealed to Reverdy that he had a new concern, manufacturing a supercharger based on new principle, which was a sure thing since all the production was to be bought by Budd Erling for now, and offered Reverdy chance to invest fifty thousand dollars. Reverdy said he knew Robbie enough and would do so, in his own name. 

"Lanny found himself wondering, was the name of Laurel Creston included among those members of the family phalanx who were waiting, patiently or impatiently, for Reverdy Johnson Holdenhurst to decide to die? Lanny thought with amusement of the sensation he might have created if he had asked this question, and gone on to reveal the part which this cousin had played in helping Robbie Budd to develop a new type of single-gear supercharger!"

In midst of this Lanny saw headlines in newspapers about a telegram from FDR to Hitler and Mussolini, much of the text as Lanny had written. FDR had named over thirty nations of Europe and Asia, and asked if Hitler were going to guarantee he wouldn't attack them. Hitler saw his chance and took it, and sent off emissaries to several who declared they weren't afraid of Germany attacking them. He called a session of Reichstag and harangued them for five to six hours, beginning with German history. 

"Lanny ... didn’t possess the gift of precognition, but he kept the newspaper clipping of the President’s telegram, and in after years he checked upon it. Of the thirty-one nations which had been named by F.D.R., eight were overrun and conquered by Hitler within a little more than two years, and in two years more he had overrun and conquered sixteen, not counting Russia, of which he took a large part, and England, which he did his best to destroy with bombing planes."

Esther came to his room one day when he was reading a book on physics, and had a serious conversation about Lizbeth and marriage and whether Lanny had someone else; she said she'd never have advised him to marry Irma, but Lizbeth was different, she would mould herself to what Lanny liked, and be domestic, content to wait for him at home in U.S. while he travelled. Lanny said he wouldn't risk being married to someone, however lovely, that he wasn't in love with, and it might happen that he might find someone a bond fall in love but being married to another person would ruin three lives. Esther and Robbie concurred about Lizbeth being very suitable for Lanny and she advised him to think it over. 

Lanny thought about the whole situation, and determined to exercise caution about falling in a trap. 

"He had told himself that he was never going to see Laurel Creston again. But that didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to think about her; he couldn’t help doing so, because every time he thought about falling in love with Lizbeth he found himself thinking about Laurel, too."

Wonder why the author didn't have Lanny set up Lizbeth with Alfy, who was closer in age and destined to be an earl? Would have been kinder, unless the Holdenhurst family are historic characters and he knew them personally, so he portrayed their lives as they were. 

But very interestingly, Upton Sinclair now he Lanny reading physics, astronomy and so on, not just the classics fundamental to education in old style. Was that due to Upton Sinclair keeping up with times and fascinated with the tremendous leap in physics during early twentieth century, or is it more due to need of the story planned in next volume, one wonders. 

Lanny was conscious of having behaved not quite entirely well with Miss Priscilla Hoyle, and avoided going to the library until he needed to; then he attempted to make amends in his own way, this time treating her with propriety as well as friendly gestures in person, and asking Esther to invite her and take care of library business at the same time. He left before that was done. 
...............................................................................


Professor Alston called from N.Y. and wanted to make sure Lanny hadn't told anyone about meeting him since the Peace Conference, and said he had information for Robbie, and asked if Robbie could see him next morning in N.Y.. Robbie was still in the old hierarchy mode where he was the people and Alston not tapped for fraternity at Yale, but Lanny changed his perspective by suggesting the information could be vital. 

Lanny and Robbie met him in N.Y., and having again emphasised that he hadn't seen Lanny in the interim decades, he proceeded to tell Robbie that his deal with Germans had to be off, that he had to throw out Göring's men who were conducting illegal acts that Robbie was unaware of but U.S. government wasn't, and most importantly, the government of U.S. was placing orders for his planes so his factory would run at full capacity, so he shouldn't worry. Between the tactful thoughts and reminders from Lanny and quiet but effective talking given by Alston, Robbie had to get over his dislike for the government. He got a call next day from a general to invite him to Washington D.C. and asked Lanny to go with him, suggesting he could visit the Holdenhurst family while in the neighbourhood.  

But also he told Lanny there was an airmail letter for him and Lanny took it casually in the morning, but read it only in the car. 

"“Your friend Weinmann is going to purchase the Vereshchagin, I feel quite certain. I have one or two other paintings which I think will interest you. Trust you can come soon. Braun.” 

"The arrangement had been that Monck was to write about paintings, selecting such as would give a hint of what he had in mind. Lanny knew nobody by the name of Weinmann, but he knew Ribbentrop, the wine salesman, and that was clear enough. Vereshchagin, the Russian, had hated war, and had made vivid its horrors in a series of paintings. Lanny did not overlook the phrase “is going to purchase,” instead of “will purchase,” more natural to a German writing English. The message told him that the Nazi Foreign Minister was planning a visit to Moscow, to arrange some sort of peace agreement, the deal concerning which both Hitler and Hess had dropped hints. The second sentence told Lanny that Monck had some project of his own and wanted money. The third was as near as he dared go in telling Lanny that these matters were urgent."

This was urgent, and Lanny called Baker from a payphone where he wouldn't be known, and again from another, and asked to see FDR next day or day after. Lanny drove Robbie to Washington D.C. while Robbie asked him about the Germans and about Europe, and Lanny was careful while responding, but managed to convey the reality. They met the military and Robbie was disbelieving of the change, he was given orders and more. Lanny went off in the evening to keep his appointment with FDR. He told him about the message from Monck, after they had chatted about Robbie and about the British royal visitors, and Lanny told about the German underground that achieved such information being brought out. 

"“This makes a pretty black prospect, Lanny. If the Nazis and the Soviets combine, they can just about take Europe.”

"As I read the riddle, Vereshchagin stands for peace, and it will be some sort of mutual non-aggression pact.” 

"“But surely the Russians must know that if Hitler could knock out France, he would overrun the Ukraine in no time!” 

"“No doubt they know everything we know, and then some. But they will be playing for time: time to get new troops trained, time to get new factories going behind the Urals.” 

"“From the accounts that come to me, things aren’t going at all well in Russia; the people are poor, and even the commonest goods are scarce.” 

"“Don’t let that fool you, Governor. I have an uncle in Paris who is a Communist deputy, and he talks the Party line perforce, but he’s a pretty levelheaded old boy, and I’ve had many tips from him. What he tells me is that the Soviet government allots just enough production of civilian goods to keep the population going. Everything else goes into defense preparation, and it’s colossal.” 

"“It’s too bad we can’t have their resources on our side, Lanny. Is there anything on earth that I can do?” 

"“Not much, unless you can promise aid to the Soviets in case Hitler attacks them.” 

"“You know I can’t do that. In the first place, in case of war, it would be almost impossible to get goods to Russia; and, in the second place, if I tried it, my opponents here would impeach me.” 

"“Well, the only other thing would be to persuade Britain and France to make up their minds and guarantee support to the Soviets if they are attacked. Britain and France can’t do it for the same reason that you can’t—political disunity at home. The greater part of the Tories and French Nationalists would rather see Hitler win than Stalin. What they want is to have them fight each other to exhaustion; and of course that’s obvious to both Stalin and Hitler—and why should they go out of their way to oblige their enemies? Hitler has said that to me in so many words. I had no answer then and I have none now; why should he?”

"At the moment there appeared to be a stalemate between Germany and Poland. The Führer had made his “one and only offer,” and Poland had said No. Whose move was it now? Lanny explained the Nazi technique, the “softening up” process, the game of intimidation which preceded every new adventure. There were more “outrages” in Danzig and the Corridor, more screaming in the Nazi press. Maybe the talk of a deal with Russia was just part of this process. Maybe Ribbentrop would pack up his duds and say he was going to Moscow, and maybe that would scare the Poles so that they would give up a few more square miles of territory. 

"It was the same in every capital of Europe; the Nazi agents were working like termites, burrowing, undermining, devouring. The amount of money they were spending was unbelievable—in France it was billions of francs. “The French like money,” said Lanny, “and most of them take what they call an ‘envelope,’ then make a speech or write an editorial or cast a vote to get another. In England it’s different—they have what Lincoln Steffens used to call ‘honest graft,’ meaning respectable big business. You notice perhaps that Chamberlain has been backing out of the stand he took right after Prague. That doesn’t mean that he has been paid any money; it isn’t even because he owns a big block of Imperial Chemical stock and Imperial Chemical has $55,000,000 invested in the German I. G. Farben; it’s that all his business friends are tied up in such deals with German cartels, and it just isn’t cricket to hurt one another’s interests. You have noticed that the Bank of England released all the Czech gold to Hitler, by way of the Bank of International Settlements. Chamberlain said he had found that he didn’t have authority to stop it, but of course that’s just the bunk. He didn’t dare to stop it, because it would hurt business and spread alarm; it would make Hitler angry and he would make a speech like the one he made to you!” 

"“I must admit I can understand the umbrella man’s point of view,” remarked the President, with a grin. It was clear that he didn’t like Adi’s method of carrying on public discussions.""

FDR wanted him to return to Britain, and lanny took his leave. He found his father busy with the men he had flown out from Newcastle, so he told him hed leve fir England next day, and Robbie asked him to visit Holdenhursts before leaving and speak to Göring about his having to break off. 

Lanny visited the Holdenhurst family, and Reverdy Holdenhurst had exhibited the two Detazes he'd purchased on opposite sides of the entrance hall, and invited a banker to view while Lanny was there. He wanted to have them all brought to Baltimore for his view, and arranged with Reverdy to have them all shipped at Reverdy's expense for an exhibition across U.S. beginning with Baltimore while the banker would store them in his vault at his expense. Lanny once again got a glimpse of a father attempting to get what his little girl wanted, but was proper and gentlemanly with Lizbeth and talked of Wickthorpe and his own daughter when alone. He departed in a couple of days, Lizbeth having shown him off at her country club. 
...............................................................................


Lanny met Rick in London and drove to Wickthorpe, to visit his daughter in the afternoon and talk to Ceddy in the evening. 

"In the excitement after Prague the Government had signed a pact guaranteeing the integrity of Poland; and of course they would stand by their word—but that didn’t keep them from urging Poland to make concessions. Anything to keep out of war! They had worked out a scheme to buy Hitler with a “peace loan” of a thousand million pounds, the biggest in history; he would agree not to spend it on armaments, he would agree to evacuate Prague, and in return he would have a share in the “development” of China and Africa—which meant colonies, of course. The news leaked, and the Government denied that anything of the sort was afoot; the consultations were “private,” a way they had of treating public affairs."

"“But, Lanny, we don’t want war!” exclaimed the Foreign Office man. “People are saying: ‘Do you want to die for Danzig?’”

"Lanny would have liked to say: “That sounds like Dr. Goebbels to me.” But he checked himself, and remarked: “Whatever they are saying, the Führer knows it.”"

In Paris Lanny met, each of them separately, his usual circle, Schneider, uncle Jesse Blackless and the DeBruyne family. The last were happy about Budd Erling doing well. 

"Denis fils had just had a talk with Colonel de Gaulle, an officer who believed in the future of airplanes and tanks, and was deeply concerned over France’s weak position."

Lanny noticed a rift in attitudes of the two brothers. The younger Charlot was still a Cagoulard and hated all left, but Denis fils was changing. 

"But the elder brother, like Baron Schneider, had noted what happened to Czechoslovakia, and it had frightened him. Maybe, after all, Adolf Hitler wasn’t the white knight sent by Providence to slay the dragon of Bolshevism; maybe he was a German, first and last, and still believed what he had written in a book more than fifteen years ago, that German safety required the annihilation of France."

Lanny met Zoltan Kertezsi who was delighted at being in charge of a Detaze show in Baltimore and thought it was better to have the paintings in U.S., safe from what was coming in Europe. Lanny called Beauty for her consent, and then called Jerry Pendleton to arrange the packing and shipping. Beauty was worried and asked him to see Marceline, so he did. She was blooming and in love, and didn't care that Oskar hadn't asked her to marry him. 

"There wasn’t any more for Lanny to say. Once upon a time—it seemed a long time—he had warned her against a Fascist, and she had paid no attention to him. Now he was not in position to warn her against a Nazi. He felt in part responsible, having introduced her to Oskar von Herzenberg and having appeared to be endorsing him and his cause. It was more of the price Lanny had to pay for being a secret agent. He himself couldn’t have a wife, and his half-sister had been thrown to the Nazi wolves. 

"There is a German saying: “When you are with the wolves you must howl with them.” So Lanny in the wolf’s den asked about the Herzenbergs, and spoke of them as his intimates. Lili Moldau was a charming actress, and the Graf was one of the shrewdest diplomats in Europe. What did he think about the present situation between Germany and Poland? Marceline replied that she refused to be concerned with the tiresome subject of politics: Oskar bored her to death with it. Lanny, thinking quickly, remarked: “It’s an important subject to Robbie right now, because if there is going to be war his business will expand, and it’s important for him to know so that he can put in orders for materials in advance. He begged me to find out all I could and cable him.” 

"“I suppose that is the right way to look at it,” remarked the dancer. She wouldn’t need to be reminded that Robbie had been paying her mother a thousand dollars a month for forty years—and that came close to half a million if you figured it up. 

"“Moreover,” explained Lanny, “it’s important to you and me, for I have just arranged with the Holdenhursts in Baltimore to ship the Detazes there and have a show next October. That ought to bring big sales; but I’m afraid if there’s a war it will be knocked out.” 

"“Oh, dear!” said the half-sister. “I’d be glad to get some extra money! I’ll tell you what—let’s have a dinner party, just us five, and I’ll keep quiet and let you pump them all you please.” 

"“I won’t have to pump, because I have things to tell the Graf that he’ll be glad to hear, and he always talks freely in return. The only trouble is, I have a date with Marshal Göring and I have to hurry. Do you suppose you could get it up for this evening? I’ll be glad to pay for it.” 

"“I have a date with Oskar. I’ll find out if the Graf and Lili can come.” She picked up the telephone, and it was a date.""

Lanny called Kurt meanwhile and Kurt had him meet Otto Abetz, who Lanny gathered was Ribbentrop's man, while Kurt was Reichswehr, both endowed with funds from separate bosses for the same purpose. Later he hosted Graf Herzenberg and Marceline, Lili and Oskar, and repeated the same things. He said that everyone was worried about Germany making an alliance with Russia. 

"“The difficulty lies in what the Russians demand: the Baltic states, and Poland at least as far as the Curzon Line. We do not exactly fancy them as next-door neighbors.” 

"“They had all that territory once,” replied Lanny; “and as you know, nations, too, have memories.” 

"“Ultimately, Herr Budd, it is a question of power. Some people can make their dreams come true, and others not.” 

"“I don’t know whether Washington is a good source of information as to Berlin,” remarked Lanny, skirting a dangerous subject; “but the report there is that Herr von Ribbentrop had his bags packed for a trip to Moscow.” 

"“It doesn’t take long to pack one’s bags,” replied the Graf, suavely, “or to unpack them again, if the weather happens to turn unfavorable for an airplane flight."

 Lanny gathered that Graf Herzenberg was more interested in friendly relations with France while Ribbentrop was more inclined to war in West. 

"Lanny wouldn’t add: “I know that Ribbentrop wants war, and you don’t.” Instead he explained: “I talked with Kurt Meissner and Otto Abetz, and they are equally optimistic as to the prospects in Paris. May I tell the Führer that this appears to be the general opinion of his representatives on the ground?” 

"“That will be quite all right, Herr Budd.” Then, tempted by his fears, the old-style Prussian nobleman permitted himself to add: “It might be well if you could communicate that information as soon as possible. Lose no time, I beg you. In these times decisions are made quickly, and when steps are taken it may be impossible to recall them. There has never been a greater danger.” 

That was what Lanny had come to hear, and it was worth an evening and a couple of thousand francs for a cabinet particulier and five converts. He added, with a smile: “You did me a favor once, if you remember, and I have hoped for a chance to return it.” 

"“I do not know many persons, even Germans, who can carry a message direct to the Führer, Herr Budd.” That was, in the American phrase, “buttering Lanny’s parsnips for him,” and it was up to him to smile graciously and assure his friend that he appreciated the courtesy."

He visited Emily Chattersworth on the way after he'dmailed his report and packed to drive to Berlin, and spent the night in Cologne. There were memories of his having come to Cologne with Irma to take Hansi and Bess out after their concert, and if only the rest of the Robin family had come at the same time! 

"Everywhere troops were moving westward, slowing up his driving and making him hate all things German."

He arrived in Berlin and saw the papers after dinner, which had fallen silent about their hatred of reds and instead were screaming at caricatures of Roosevelt, calling him Jew and adding that hatred. He saw Monck who talked about a glitch or uncertainty in the news he'd sent in code, but assured Lanny it had been genuine. He had another plan of taking something out, hence the message to hurry and need of money. 

""I have had for some time the idea that you belong to some secret service. I prefer that you don’t answer; I just want you to know that that is what I believe, so I am not accusing you in my mind because you don’t run the risks that I run.” 

"“I’ll tell you this,” was Lanny’s reply. “I was married to Trudi Schultz, and I loved her. I have not forgotten what the Nazis did to her, and I am never going to forget. Think of me as carrying out Trudi’s orders.”

"That was all Lanny had to say, and he was ready to stop by the curb when Monck surprised him by remarking: “Between us, Genosse, we are going to have another Trudi on our hands. That is Miss Creston.” 

"“You don’t say!” 

"“She has become a convert, and she means it. I am afraid she will do something reckless and get herself into serious trouble. I want to suggest that you should see her and give her a warning.”"

Monck told him that when they parted, he'd told her he'd be returning to Germany, and she'd said she knew he'd smuggled out something in the car, because he'd taken the car away on arrival before returning it to her. She asked him about his work, organisation,  Germany, and he had to promise to contact her in Berlin. They had met, and he found that she'd brought a trunk filled with the books he'd given her names of, in Germany. 

" ... you should persuade her to get rid of those Red books and keep quiet until she gets out of Hitler’s power. She is too naïve and also too conspicuous to take any part in our dangerous activities.”"

Lanny called Heinrich Jung and Hilde Donnerstein and went to meet Göring at the time he was given appointment. Göring, told of changes regarding.  Budd Erling collaboration with Germany. They spoke of other matters, and Göring asked him to approach through Hess to visit the boss and tell him about various things hed just told Hermann . 

"Hermann’s last words were: “Freundschaft mit Frankreich!” And Lanny knew that was the slogan he was to take to Berchtesgaden. Friendship with France—and, of course, its corollary: War against the Reds!"

Hess was away, and lanny met Laurel Creston and they had a walk after their lunch, and talked about her work. Lanny told her to not write about anything or anyone she encountered in Germany until she left with no intention to return, not even with using a pen name, and she was surprised. He advised her against letting leftist books lie around. But then as he dropped her there was the mail, and she let him have a copy of the Blue book out of three that arrived; he looked, and she had written a short story under an assumed name. He mailed the Blue book back, and determined to keep away. 

He met Hess who was worried about his boss being advised by likes of Ribbentrop, Himmler and Goebbels who wanted to war against West.  

"They tell him not to worry about Amerika, because the fighting will all be over before Amerika can even get started to arm. They tell him that we can roll over France in a few weeks—there is plenty of time left this summer.”

"“They mean to fight France ahead of Poland, then?” 

"“Poland does not count at all; we all know that we can take Warsaw in two or three weeks of fighting weather—in the summer or autumn.” 

"“But the British have agreed to defend the Poles!” 

"“Maybe they will and maybe they won’t. In any case, what can they do? If they land in France, we can wipe them out." 

Hess said he'd let his boss know Lanny was at hand, and see how thigs went from there. Lanny drove to Switzerland to type his report and mail it, and visit an old client. He drove to Geneva and met Sidney Armstrong and his family, and later, since Hess said he should wait, called Rick to come with Nina for a holiday. They drove around Switzerland, packing a picnic in the morning and driving till dark, and finding an inn at night. The holiday was extended to a trip to Bienvenu, where Beauty and Parsifal Dingle were in charge of little toddler Marcel, just learning to speak. Lanny didn't want Beauty to throw a party while Rick was there, and she was domestic. 

"Until there came an engraved invitation to a reception in honor of the Grand Duke Vladimir, who since the death of Cyril was greeted as the future Tsar of all the Russias." 

Rick tried seance, but nothing happened, and Nina got messages from some relatives she did not know. Lanny got Zaharoff who instructed him to pay Ambrose Volonsky in Monte Carlo a thousand pounds, and get them from his niece. Then suddenly there was Marjorie, grandmother of Laurel Creston, who accused Lanny of getting Laurel in trouble, and told him to stay away. Lanny accompanied his mother to events, such as the Grand Duke Vladimir reception, and heard news from corners of Europe such as Estonia, Yugoslavia and Atlantic coast of Spain, news that wouldn't be in papers, about the impending war.  

"Kurt Meissner had an aunt who lived on the Riviera on account of her health; Lanny had known her since boyhood, and had kept up the acquaintance because at her home he met influential Junker personalities. Now he attended one of her Kaffeeklatsche, and was treated as a person of distinction because he had been received at Berchtesgaden. He listened to Prussian officials’ wives scolding at the enemies of their country; he agreed amiably with everything they said, and in return had the privilege of hearing the wife of a retired Reichswehr general assure the widow of the Court-Counsellor von und zu Nebenaltenberg that there was no occasion for anxiety, for the German armies had been secretly mobilizing and there were now more than a million troops on the eastern border and as many more on the west. Lieb’ Vaterland magst ruhig sein!"

Rick had written an article with stuff he got from Lanny and it was about to be published, so he said he better not be seen at Bienvenu,  and lanny said he'd better go back to Berlin. 

"He couldn’t tell his friend that only a few hours ago he had received a letter, forwarded from the Hotel Adlon—one of those obscure-looking letters having to do with the marketing of pictures: “You recall the Vereshchagin about which I wrote you. It has been brought to Berlin, and I am sure it will soon be sold. I have come upon a Rosa Bonheur portrait, representing a woman with a laurel crown, which I believe you would be interested to see. It is not covered by insurance so I am worried about it. I think that you could pick up some bargains here at present. I am interested in your project of a collection of historical paintings and wonder what your American friends thought of it. I know of such a work not far from the Schloss which you used to visit as a boy. Best wishes. Braun.”"

Lanny drove to Paris and saw his friends off, they took a train to London. He called on the various contacts, but some were off on vacations. De Bruyne family was at home. 

"Politicians and political associations, journalists, police agents, private detectives—all these a rich man had to pay, and all wanted more, and might be getting it from the other side. 

"The “have” nation was in the same position, and what money it paid concerned the “have” man in the form of taxes and imposts, loss of territories, markets, and access to raw materials. France had loaned billions of francs to Czechoslovakia, to be used in arming the country—only to see the armaments and the plants taken over by the Nazis and the bonds become worthless. Billions had been loaned to Poland, and was that to be gobbled into the same greedy maw? And then the Baltic states and the Balkan lands, all parts of the cordon sanitaire, so carefully and expensively built and maintained? All France was tormented by a sense of frustration, and families were rent apart by arguments as to which statesmen were the lesser scoundrels and which nations the lesser dangers. There was not much happiness left in the household of Lanny’s long-dead sweetheart, and he was glad that she couldn’t hear the controversies. “It is impossible to find out what France is going to do,” he wrote in his report, “because France doesn’t know what she is going to do.”"

Lanny drove to Berlin, took care of his art business and was invited to Karinhall,  and Furtwaengler said Göring wanted his art collection shipped to N.Y. in his name. Lanny met Monck.  

"“My information is that it is practically concluded. It is highly secret, and some of its terms may never be known. The point is, it gives Hitler the green light so far as concerns Poland.” 

"“What madness on the part of the Soviets! Don’t they know what the Nazis will do to them, once they have a common border?” 

"“I am not in their confidence,” countered the man of the underground. “I can only guess—they figure on getting a couple of years’ respite at the least. If there has to be a war, Stalin would presumably rather have it between Germany and France-Britain than between Germany and Russia. The Nazis gave him that choice.” 

"“Also,” ventured Lanny, “he figures that Hitler will wear himself out while Russia grows stronger.""

The Anglo French mission had arrived in Russia, lanny noted, perhaps too late and not consisting of people with decision making authority,  so Soviets were suspicious. 

"“I notice that the Nazis have announced a celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the victory of Tannenberg. The people I talked to in Paris thought that was meant as a deliberate provocation of Russia. Was it meant as a blind?” 

"“I should say it is a pretext for moving troops into East Prussia. I’ll wager the celebration will never be held; there will be war before that date.” 

"“The twenty-seventh of this month?” 

"“My information is that the Reichswehr is to move into Poland on the twenty-fifth.”"

The underground couldn't do anything unless SS were finished, Monck said, they had been ground to powder. Lanny asked about what Monck meant about Laurel, and Monck said she was determined to help the underground, and did not understand how dangerous it was, especially since she was a foreigner. He wanted Lanny to dissuade her. Lanny met her and told her about the appearance of her grandmother in the seance warning her of danger, but she wasn't impressed by the danger, or by his own attempts to dissuade her from writing until she left, or his cautioning her that she was certain to be watched by Gestapo. 

Lanny went of to visit Karinhall as invited. 

"Der Dicke told about the sixteenth-century Flemish tapestries which he was buying for the marble walls of his enormous new dining hall. He had accurate sketches of them, and wanted to show these to Lanny and get his judgment. He was buying them from the American newspaper publisher, Mr. Hearst, through a woman agent in London. he had visited Germany recently, and made a favorable impression upon them all—a man of brilliant mind, a typical man of the West, tall, vigorous, dominating. 

"“It is hard for an American to understand the National-Socialist point of view,” remarked Göring; “and still harder to advocate it publicly. Mr. Hearst, I should say, does as well as anyone in his country.”"

Lanny said he had seen the effect of Hearst newspapers on the readership in small towns of U.S.. 

"Lanny voiced his idea that the Führer’s unprecedented success was due to his shrewdness in choosing the items of a popular program, offering a hope of economic betterment to the masses; he was afraid, he said, that Mr. Hearst’s lack of political success in the States was due to his having forgotten the “radical” ideas of his early newspaper career. “In those days he was all for ‘trust-busting,’ I am told; but now his program is purely negative, and the result is, the people read Hearst but vote Roosevelt.” 

"“That is a valuable comment,” declared the Reichsminister who was also head of the Prussian State. “I have always urged upon my subordinates that we must never forget our promises to the people and keep renewing them.” 

"“I notice that you don’t say ‘carry them out,’” chuckled Lanny; and that was the sort of remark which kept Der Dicke amused."

They came to the current situation. 

""The Poles are stark mad, but a good part of that madness has been deliberately created by cunning British intrigue. They promise aid, but what aid can they mean to send?”

"“Will they send a fleet through our mine fields in the Skagerrak? Or will they sacrifice part of their inadequate air force? Can they imagine getting an army ashore on the Continent in time to save Poland?” 

"“They have been told that the Führer desires never to face a two-front war,” returned Lanny, mildly. 

"“It is not a two-front war when one enemy is destroyed before the other can take the field. Poland, from a military point of view, is like one of those sets which the motion-picture people build, all front, and behind it nothing. When the British realize that, they will consider seriously whether they desire to fight a long and exhausting war to no purpose.” 

"“Then you won’t bomb London or Paris at the outset?”"

Göring repeated the usual lie about not wanting a war. Lanny tried again on his return to contact Hess, to arrange his visit to Berghof, but it was to no avail, and he even tried Heinrich Jung, but there seemed to be a freeze.

Lanny met Monck as arranged by them, and after talking about the looming war and about other related things, Monck had news to tell. He told Lanny that Laurel Creston suspected lannybof being a Nazi agent, wanted to report it to the FBI, and said that he'd made up a nonsensical story about the grandmother and seance because he didn't wish Laurel to write and inform thevworkd about truth of nazis. Monck suggested he call her and ask her to keep in touch after she'd left Germany. 

"The Nazis wanted to claim Danzig as a German city, but at the same time to deny Poland the right to charge duty on goods imported from Danzig into Poland. A Nazi fishing fleet went out and caught herring, and were they to go into Poland duty free? A British concern in Danzig, using Dutch capital, made margarine, and if the Poles charged an import duty on that, it became an international “incident.” 

"Diplomats running from one capital to the next, exchanging visits, delivering memoranda. The British ambassador came back to Berlin, and had an interview with Ribbentrop’s assistant, and quarreled with him, as English diplomats were not supposed to do. Shudders ran through Berlin society, and reached a presidential agent. Sir Nevile had solemnly warned that Britain meant to back Poland; he was unimpressed by the argument that the Polish Cabinet was made up of lunatics, and that this released Britain from her treaty obligations."

Lanny got an urgent call from Hilde Donnerstein to visit her, she was back in Berlin and in tears, her son was called and she hoped the war would not be so long as to have her younger son get called too. They talked about the treaty with Russia that was whispered about. 

"“I really believe it. I expect the announcement will be made soon.” 

"“Do you know what is in the agreement?” 

"“It is a treaty of non-aggression—that is all I have been told.” 

"“There are no military clauses?” 

"“That I cannot say. You know how it is—there are secrets and then there are double secrets and triple secrets, Aber—I can tell you this—something you must never breathe, at least not in Germany. The way we convinced the Russians was by letting them have recordings of what went on between our Nummer Eins and the British Prime Minister at the Godesberg conference last year. You remember—just before Munich?” 

"“Certainly; I was holding my breath all those hours.” 

"“Well, we had dictaphones planted, and recorded every word that Chamberlain said. He pointed out that the true foe of western civilization is Bolshevism, and hinted pretty plainly that that was the direction in which Die Nummer Eins should turn his attention. I am told that this is what decided the Russians to make a deal.”"

As a final attempt, lanny saw Pröfenik, who spoke about war, planes dropping from skies, and thousand year Reich; Lanny's plan was to go to much after mailing a report from across the border in Switzerland and call Hess to say he had an extraordinary seance with Pröfenik. 
...............................................................................


Lanny was about to drive off, but recalled not having told Beauty his next address, and went back to the reception where a bell boy came running to say he was wanted on telephone. Laurel Creston did not identity herself and asked if he knew her, and could meet where they talked last, and coukd he arrange to have a car. He picked her up in the Tiergarten after making sure she wasn't being watched, and told her to lie diwn in the back with a blanket covering her. He questioned her, and she said a hotel maid had run out to warn her that police had come looking for her, and told her not to return from the park she had been sitting in. 

Lanny asked about what she had been doing, and so on. She had taken her freedom, rights and legal protection for granted, as defined by U.S. laws, and he explained it didn't apply in Germany under nazis. She was ashamed of involving him, and he said they would be looking for him soon even if he hadn't picked her up, since he had called for her at the pension in person. He was worried about whether Gestapo had picked up Monck, but there was no way to check. 

They drove all day, Westwards since the hotel had his Munich address and it was safer to go West, but crossing the border was the problem, she had no papers on her. He found a way to spend the night when they came across a Hitler youth camp and declared they were tourists who wished to visit. He thrilled the boys with his accounts of meeting their leader and being his guest, and they were welcomed to spend the night when Lanny asked. In the morning Lanny veered South rather than risk the French border. She asked what he was planning before she called him, and he told her he'd thought of bringing Madame Zyszynski to visit Berchtesgaden, which made her ask if they, and he, really took those things seriously. 

Idea came to Lanny to take Laurel Creston as a medium to Berghof. She would be dissuading them from war, and if she impressed them her papers would not be a problem, they would immediately give her an exit visa. 

They had driven West from Berlin to Teutoburgerwald, South to Westerwald and now Lanny veered southeast, driving fast, since it would be best to arrive soonest at Berghof. They were near Oberwald. 

"There are many mountains in Germany and they are covered with forests, which in the course of years have been tended and trained, until now the trees are in rows, like soldiers. It is a land of order and discipline, and even the wild things, animal and vegetable, obey the regulations. Lanny said: “The wild stags come to the feeding racks in winter, and they have names assigned to them, and the dates when they are to die are recorded in a book.”"

He coached her throughout for her role, telling her about details of people she would encounter, the spirits that could be making an appearance in her role as a medium, and more. He saw that she was bent on giving Hitler advice to desist from war, and asked her to refrain in the interest of her own exit papers and safety of them both, but she'd said she'd see, and Lanny again saw she had a mind of her own. He called Berghof from Ulm and spoke to Hess, who was happy and eager to have him, especially since Lanny told him he was bringing a medium he'd met on the Riviera who had been giving extraordinary results. 

""This Miss Elvirita Jones is a delicate person and easily upset; her work depends upon her state of mind, and she does not want to meet a crowd of people. Let me suggest that you have someone meet us at the gate, and bring her in by a side door, and straight to her room, where she can rest and freshen up. Meantime, I’ll come in by the front door, and nobody need know that I have a lady with me.” 

"“Right you are!” said the Deputy. 

"“You are sure we won’t be in anybody’s way?” 

"“Quite the contrary—we have all been longing for just what you have. Come ahead!”"

They drove through Munich, listening to the radio. 

"The French and British purpose had been to draw Russia into war with Germany; but the Führer, who wanted only peace, had thwarted that treacherous scheme, and now it was no longer conceivable that the stubborn Poles should resist his demand for German territory to be returned to the Reich."

The drive up to Berchtesgaden reminded him, of course, of another drive four years ago, with Irma and Trudi. 
...............................................................................


They arrived, and lanny explained that her bags had been stolen somewhere along the way but they had no idea where; they said not to worry, the housekeeper would take care of it. She was taken in and lanny proceeded to the door he was shown, to main hall. It was large and swarming, but Hess came and his greeting certified Lanny to others. Hess took him upstairs to adi whik e he himself went off for the seance. Adi was under strain, the reputation to Russia was flying next morning, and Nevile Henderson wanted to see him. 

"There was just one thing he had to make up his mind about, and that was: would Britain and France fight? That was the million-dollar question, the billion-dollar question—you would need astronomical figures to evaluate it. The Führer had the answer in his own mind and considered that he had proved it in six different tests: when he had moved his troops into the Rhineland; when he had enlarged the Reichswehr beyond the hundred thousand permitted by the Versailles Diktat; when he had resumed conscription in Germany; when he had taken Austria; when he had taken the Sudetenland; when he had taken Prague. Every time Britain and France had threatened to fight, and every time the generals and the diplomatic staff had said they would, but they didn’t. And now, only one time more, Danzig and the Corridor; or maybe two times, for he had just announced that he must have Posen and the lost parts of Silesia; and there might possibly be a third, if the insane Poles should refuse to behave themselves and he would have to take Warsaw to keep them in order."

Adi asked Lanny what Chamberlain could be thinking. 

"The upper-class Englishman is taught that it is his destiny to govern; he is taught that idea from the time he is able to understand words, and as a rule no other idea ever takes root in his consciousness. He is taught that he must govern well and honestly; and whenever his interests require that he do a certain thing, he must not fail to find moral reasons for the action. Other people may not be satisfied with those reasons, and that is what has given rise to the idea that the English are hypocritical.” 

"That caused the Führer of the Germans to recall how Clive and Hastings had taken India. They had found moral reasons for that; and even though the rest of the world was not satisfied, India was kept. Evidently Adi had found some time for reading history; or perhaps somebody had been supplying him with data, prior to the arrival of the British ambassador in the morning!"

Hess came in, very excited, to report about the seance; he said Zaharoff and Otto Kahn up name, the two had carried on a direct conversation, after an already remarkable first half where Baron Zinszolkern had appeared and had a dialogue with Heinzelmamnn, someone familiar to them. Lanny hadn't said anything about Zaharoff, and he asked Laurel after breakfast when they went for a walk next morning, but she had no idea what he was referring to, and it dawned on lanny that she actually was a medium! 

Nevile Henderson arrived bearing a letter, and there was a tirade - but later news came that treaty with russia was signed, and people in the house relaxed. 

"Lanny decided that Germany might be about to plunge into another World War, but there would be no cheering and singing in the streets as there had been a quarter of a century ago."

"A strange fate which had befallen this châlet, once the summer residence of an obscure Hamburg merchant, and now the center of attention of the whole world. Haus Wachenfels, or Watch Rock, it had been called; some said Wachenfeld, or Watch Field. It had been for rent, and some of Adi’s rich supporters had taken it, to serve as his retreat when he was released from prison. Here he and Hess had written the second volume of Mein Kampf; and later, when the money had begun to pour in, he had bought it, and changed the name to Der Berghof. Thereafter it had been enlarged, year after year, until now it was no longer a retreat, but the summer capital of Germany. The world called it Berchtesgaden, that being the nearest village and post office; it was as if the wild witch had come back to life again, and there was a new Walpurgis night up on the side of the mountain, and the enchantment there wrought filled the whole world with terror.

"The center of this excitement was one medium-sized pudgy-faced man who looked as if he might be the butcher, the baker, or the candlestick maker. But he had a daimon inside him, that drove him day and night and made him drive all other people, whether for or against him. He had built a daimon movement, and now it had caught him up and would have driven him forward even if he had wanted to pull back, which he didn’t. He wanted to go to the end, which was the subjection of the world to that daimon, the making over of the world in the image of that daimon.

"He would summon his generals, his most highly trained military experts to a conference; and when they pointed out the dangers of the situation, the vast resources of their enemies, he would fly into a rage with them, call them cowards and mice in uniform, and send them packing. He would summon Ribbentrop or Goebbels or Himmler, men of hate and terror, men of words and dreams like Adi’s own. The wild witch Berchta had taken up her dwelling in their hearts, and they saw the world not as it was but as she wished it."

Adi had his turn with a seance, and Hess came very excited to Lanny's room to report about the seance where Alois, adi's father, had appeared, and then Bismarck, repeatedly warning of danger by war. Adi wanted another seance, and possibly carrying Laurel Creston back to Berlin with them, which Hess wanted too because the boss wouldn't take it from him but would from Bismarck.

Lanny agreed to ask her, and took her for a walk in the forest before discussing the seance. Again, she'd tried her best to not go into a trance, but had, and had no memory of part of the seance, where the word "vernichtung" was mentioned as a warning. Lanny tried to persuade her for another seance. She finally agreed to just one more seance, but no staying on and no travelling back to Berlin with adi, with or without Lanny.

"War was coming, and nothing on earth could stop it—so Lanny had concluded. Could anything in heaven or hell, paradise or purgatory, limbo or Walhalla stop it? Could the spirits of Heinzelmann and Bismarck and Hindenburg, of Strasser and Eckart and the other old companions stop it? That was a problem with which Lanny wrestled at odd moments all the day and part of the night. Could it be stopped even for a few days more? Was it Laurel Creston’s duty to risk her life, and Lanny Budd’s to risk his job, on the chance of being able to delay it? He told himself a grim No, for he didn’t believe that anything could permanently hold Adolf Hitler except a licking on the field of battle, and there was serious doubt whether delays did not help him more than they helped Britain and France.

"This was a military question, and he was in a position to hear it discussed by the world’s best authorities. Fighting weather in Poland was ideal in the month of September, but in October came the autumn rains and the fields were turned into bogs. So, in the consultations which were going on in the Führer’s study, the military answer was “Now or never—or at any rate not until next summer.” The Reichswehr men differed among themselves, but the SS fanatics were like war horses, champing at their bits and dancing on their iron-shod hooves. They knew that everything was in readiness, and what could be holding the Führer back? When the whisper spread that it might be spirits, brought there by an American playboy and his female companion, there were glowering looks, and Lanny realized that it might not much longer be safe for the pair of them to take long walks in the forests of the wild witch Berchta!"

Lanny retired to his room and read the Journal of Parapsychology from Duke University that he had with him. He read an article by Professor J. B. Rhine on psychokinetic effects, and began another that was about a trance medium and her communications, which made him wonder if Laurel Creston would again go into a trance.

"It suggested to Lanny that he himself was a psychokinetic construction, and not the purely mechanical object which a certain school of philosophers had been calling him for something like a century and a half."

Again Hess came, charged with excitement - several of their early colleagues had appeared, and then Hindenburg, all telling adi to wait, so both adi and Hess were desirous of more seances. Lanny went to Laurel's room and sitting with back of his chair obstructing the keyhole, communicated via writing on a small pad, telling her of factors involved. She asked what he thought, and he replied he was in two minds. She agreed for just one more seance and one more day, and insisted they leave the next day.

That night, it was Laurel Creston who came to his room, insisting they leave immediately; adi had tried to force himself on her, she'd threatened to scream and she was unwilling to wait while Lanny got papers from Hess. Lanny reassured her of being within hearing distance, and told her to wedge a chair against the door, with a code knock that would tell her it's him. He talked to Hess and got him to get exit papers for both, and they drove off in middle of night, down the mountain road from Berchtesgaden. Next morning they were in the Inn valley, driving towards Engadine.
...............................................................................


"A gigantic hand of international poker was being played, and sooner or later somebody would “call,” and the hands would be laid on the table, and what would be found in them? The son of Budd-Erling remarked: “Some day historians will look back and observe how the fate of the world hung upon the processes of one psychopathic mind, and will contemplate with horror the idea that such a situation should have been permitted to exist.” 

"“I don’t have to wait for historians,” replied Laurel Creston. “I contemplate it with horror now. I am wondering if it wasn’t my duty to stay and try to control the man at any cost.” 

"“You couldn’t have stayed,” was the other’s response. “I would never have consented to leave you in Hitler’s house.” 

"“Not to prevent a war?” 

"“Sooner or later they would have discovered your real name, and then you would no longer have had any power. Also, I would have lost the power to go back into Germany, which is important to me.” 

"“I have a tendency to forget that,” she replied. “It is not very considerate of me.” 

"“You are one of those idealistic temperaments that cannot resist the desire to save the world. I honor you for it, but at the same time I fear for your happiness. Take my advice, Miss Creston, and consider that you have done your best, and allow yourself the rest which you have earned.” He said this with a smile of grandfatherly benevolence, and ventured to turn his eyes from the highway long enough for a glance at her serious, troubled face. 

"“My friends call me Laurel,” she replied. “Don’t you think that you have proved yourself a good friend?” 

"“My friends call me Lanny,” he answered, promptly. “I hope you will be one of them from now on.” 

"“From now on, Lanny; and I’ll try to prove it. I don’t know what you are doing and don’t intend to ask, but I am certain in my heart that you hate those evil men we have just parted from. This is a bond between us, and I’ll be prepared to stand by as a comrade.” 

"“Well, Laurel,” he smiled, “you promised that everything you saw and learned in the Berghof would be locked up in your own heart forever. I must ask you to consider my attitude toward those evil men as a part of the secret, and indeed the most important part of all. I will say this much and no more: I am under a solemn pledge, and I have to put you under the same.” 

"“I think I understand, and you may count upon me not to hint at the subject again.” 

"“I have to ask more than that. When you speak of me to others, do so on the basis that we have not met since that evening in the home of Sophie, Baroness de la Tourette, when you called me a troglodyte. That was helpful to me in a fashionable company, and it may be in others.”"

They crossed into Switzerland late night on August 27th, 1939, and Laurel Creston was again herself, Elvirita Jones having disappeared after they were finished crossing out of Austria. They found an inn and checked into two rooms, and Lanny assured her she was safe. Locked in his own room, he typed detailed long report and sealed the double envelopes before finally sleeping. 

Laurel Creston was grateful, and also perceptive. Lanny asked her future plans, and suggested she stay at Bienvenu for a while and become a troglodyte like him, so his cover would remain, she could be safe, and the seances go on. He planned to visit Bienvenu after a round of Paris, England and N.Y., and asked her to keep his true persona as seen by her a secret, and say they met in Switzerland where she had been, saying nothing to anyone about Germany.  He called Beauty and arranged it. Lanny and Laurel then parted, after he had seen to it she was all right by giving her most of the money he had and seeing she was safe in Bern in a hotel till she could go to Bienvenu, while her papers were arranged by the U.S. embassy. 
...............................................................................


Lanny called Schneider from Bern before he drove to Paris, and was invited for dinner. They spoke of the impending crisis, and Schneider suggested Lanny speak with the French premier, Daladier, and called someone to arrange it. Next morning Lanny met Daladier. 

"Lanny would have liked to say: “Make no mistake, Monsieur le Premier, you will have to fight the Führer sooner or later.” But of course his role didn’t permit that. 

"What he had to say was: “I am a lover of art and a friend of peace. I have known Herr Hitler for many years, and this is what he tells me.” Then followed one of Adi’s discourses on his respect for western culture and his abhorrence for that of Asia—all parts of that continent, Tartar and Mongolian as well as Semitic. This could not have been very new to Daladier, who had just received two of Adi’s long communications, pouring out his grievances. “The Macedonian conditions prevailing along our eastern frontier must cease. I see no possibility of persuading Poland, who deems herself safe from attack by virtue of guarantees given to her, to agree to a peaceful solution.” 

"What the man of the French people wanted was to ply Lanny Budd with questions concerning the man of the German people, to whom he had appealed as one front-line soldier of the last war to another of the same. What kind of man was he, au fond; what did he really want, and where would he stop, if anywhere, and could anybody trust him—save possibly his own Party members, and the General Staff of his army? Lanny had to bear in mind that every word he spoke would go back to Berlin, and with magical speed; for Dala’s Foreign Minister, Georges Bonnet, was the most ardent of appeasers, and Bonnet’s wife had been the intimate friend and confidante of Otto Abetz. Lanny said: “No, Monsieur le Premier, I am certain that the Führer is not bluffing. I don’t think that he wants war, but he wants Danzig and the Corridor, and is determined to have them before the fall rains. The night when I left Berchtesgaden he was hesitating; but now he is in Berlin, and may be seeing a different set of advisers, and for all I know his army may have orders to attack Poland tonight.”"

After the meeting Lanny called Kurt Meissner and was invited over to lunch. 

"Lanny reported that the Führer was hesitating, and the Premier was hesitating—a safe report to make about the head of any government in Europe that 29th day of August 1939. In his role of friend to all the great, Lanny would chat freely, and his host, cordial but cautious, would reveal more than he realized. 

"This day Prime Minister Chamberlain was addressing the House. Radio microphones have never been admitted to that sacred place, but soon afterwards the BBC broadcast a summary of the speech. The Prime Minister rebuked the Hearst press for having “invented” an alleged text of his confidential reply to Hitler; he went on to reveal that the argument had been narrowed down to a question of procedure. The British government insisted that the issues between Germany and Poland must be settled by negotiations and not by force. Poland was willing; and would the Führer refuse? What the British government had in mind as a final settlement, Chamberlain did not say, and perhaps did not know. Was it to be another Munich? Or was it to be “a corridor across the Corridor,” a device much talked about?

"He returned to the home where he was a guest, and made a report to his host. That duty done, he shut himself in his bedroom and wrote a quite different report to F.D.R."

Lanny visited uncle Jesse Blackless and knew beforehand that party line of French communists was already fixed. Democracies were as bad as fascists, and left had to let them fight it out. 

"“God help you, Uncle Jesse, if Hitler finishes off Poland and has a common frontier with the Soviet Union! He will start marching some midnight, and won’t stop till he has reached the Urals.” 

"“It may be you are right,” was the reply. “If that happens, we shall retreat to the Urals, and start to beat him from there.”"

He called Marceline and she was distressed about war looming, and said she would go with Oskar if he were called, she didnt intend to lose him. Lanny visited her to dissuade her, but she couldn't take it seriously. He told her that her going to Berlin in the event of war would be considered pro Nazi and she would be hated in France and couldn't return to a career in Paris, but she said everybody loved nazis, and wouldn't believe that would change the moment it was war. She didn't intend to marry him, even if he asked, she intended being free, and she could dance in Berlin. 

Schneider's daughter invited him to Hotel Grand Palace Trianon at Versailles, where everybody of consequence in Paris was, as Lanny could see. He drove to Calais next day, last day of August, and found the queue for ferryboats long, since cars might be commandeered in France if war came. He called Wickthorpe on arrival in England and was promptly invited. Lanny had decided he was not likely to visit Berghof any more, and would try helping Britain. 

"Ribbentrop had produced what he said were the final terms for a German settlement with Poland. They consisted of sixteen points, elaborately and precisely set forth, and the champagne salesman had proceeded to read them aloud as fast as his lips and tongue could move—which was faster than the mind of an Englishman could take in German words and sort them out from the oddly inverted German arrangement. Henderson had protested, whereupon Ribbentrop had thrown the document onto the table, declaring impatiently that it was all out of date anyhow, the Poles had failed to send the plenipotentiary as required. 

"The demands, as published later that day in the Berlin newspapers, were not unreasonable, and there might have been a possibility of persuading the Poles to accept them. But what was the purpose of presenting them in that extraordinarily, rude and self-defeating way? Could it be that Hitler, with his bombing planes ready to fly and his tanks ready to roll, had devised a trick, so that he could say to the world: “You see what reasonable plans I suggested, but the Poles would not consider them and the English would not even transmit them?”"

Wickthorpe and Albany wanted to know what this meant, and if it was deliberate ploy. Lanny said it was possible, or else it was a madhouse where Göring, Hess and Weizsäcker had counsellor negotiations and prepared the document, then Goebbels had come in with stories of atrocities in Polish corridor, and Ribbentrop had opposed it and produced the drama by saying Nevile Henderson had deliberately come late and pretended not to understand. 

"The proper and reticent Gerald Albany surprised Lanny greatly by his response to that explanation. “What a louse!” said he."

They could only wait. 

"Polish reports came in that German patrols had already crossed the border at several points. Was it true? Nobody could know what to believe any more!"

More reports from Germany came, from Nevile Henderson. The Ceddy and Albany asked Lanny what the French premier had said. 

"Lanny repeated carefully every word he could recall of the Premier’s utterance. He saw Ceddy look at Gerald significantly and then turn to the third man. “Don’t you think it might be worth while for the P.M. to hear this?” 

"They all agreed, and Lanny said: “Naturally, I’d be very glad to meet the P.M., if you are sure I wouldn’t bore him, and if it isn’t too late.” It was just after midnight, and the date was the 1st of September. The Englishmen were sure that nobody would go to bed that night; they might doze for a bit on a sofa, but all would be “on call.”"

Ceddy called from another room and returned to say that the PM would be happy to hear Lanny. The three walked over and Ceddy went into the conference room with Lanny, introduced him and withdrew. The PM, Neville Chamberlain, invited Lanny into the smaller sitting room and asked about the perplexing man who had declared in Munich that he didn't have time to wait a day, and then invited him to see Kehlstein, via a drive of a few hundred miles up a mountain road. 

"“I will tell you, Mr. Budd, I am an unhappy old man. I confront tonight—or shall I say this morning—the failure of my dearest hopes. I am expecting word that the German armies have invaded Poland in force.” 

"“I think that you should get it about dawn, sir.” 

"“Well, I am not given to extravagant language, but I really can see no limits to the calamity; it may mean the end of our civilization, and I cannot imagine what will come after it. ... No one will ever be able to say that I did not do everything in my power to avert this calamity.” 

“Assuredly not,” Lanny replied. “If they have any fault to find, it will be that you tried too hard.” 

“I would rather it stood that way, Mr. Budd. This war, if it comes, will be such a ghastly thing. I was resolved not to have it on my conscience.”"

He asked about the military, and lanny told him about the German air force being better than combined strength of Britain and France, in material terms. Neville Chamberlain said British generally did better later, and Lanny wanted to say there might be no later in air warfare, but refrained. The pm asked about the french premiere.  

"Lanny said: “I think, sir, the Premier feels just as you do about not having this war on his conscience; but he fully intends to stand by his pledge to Poland—as I am sure that you do also.” 

"Was that a gentle suggestion? Or was it a delicately phrased inquiry? The P.M. apparently did not care; he responded promptly: “We shall have to do that, unquestionably.”"

Lanny wanted to send his report off, immediately. Clipper airmail had been established recently, and war might restrict communications. He tried to take leave by suggesting the PM needed rest. 

"“I can tell you this with some assurance,” replied the friend of the great; “there is very little chance that anything will happen until dawn. I have heard some of the Führer’s aides discuss the subject, and they agree that the bombing planes will fly according to the almanac; they will leave their fields so as to arrive over their targets at the first moment of visibility.” 

"“Poor Warsaw! Poor Warsaw!” exclaimed the sad old man."

Lanny went to his hotel, wrote and mailed his report, and took a chance calling the hotel where Rick stayed, guessing he might be there; Lanny had let him know about coming. They drove into the country. 

"A year ago in all the parks of London rows of trenches had been dug to serve as emergency bomb shelters, and these had been allowed to stay till the next “Munich,” so dreaded by all the popular forces. Now on the undulating stretches of Hampstead Heath they found gangs of men working by torchlight, digging foundations for anti-aircraft guns. “That doesn’t look like appeasement,”" said Lanny. Rick asked what Lanny planned to do. Lanny said he'd try to get out of his obligations and return to join on British side, and Rick said he'd be more valuable in information at foreign office. He said Alfy had joined the air force. 

"At four o’clock in the morning the Nazi Gauleiter of Danzig issued a proclamation announcing that his city was a part of the German Reich. At a quarter to five o’clock a German cruiser opened fire upon the Polish port of Gdynia, near Danzig, and one hour later German troops all around the German borders of Poland started their march—some seventy divisions altogether, more than a million men. At the same time the Luftwaffe took off from its carefully prepared bases, and showers of bombs fell upon Polish airports, oil depots, and communication centers. The German espionage had been so perfect that they knew exactly where to strike, and the greater part of the small Polish Air Force was destroyed on the ground. The German Panzer divisions swept forward with such speed that the Poles never got a chance to complete their mobilization. It was like a swarm of stinging wasps swooping down upon some large slow animal, blinding it, paralyzing its nerve centers, and leaving it a mass of helpless flesh. From the Nazi point of view it was glorious, and from the point of view of military science it was something new in the world. 

"Needless to say, Adi Schicklgruber wouldn’t do a thing like that without issuing a manifesto; and of course he would say that he was attacked. He told his Reichswehr: “The Polish state has refused the peaceful settlement of relations which I desired, and has appealed to arms. Germans in Poland are persecuted with bloody terror and driven from their houses.… In order to put an end to this lunacy, I have no other choice than to meet force with force from now on.” He appointed a Ministerial Council for Defense, and put Göring at the head of it, with five other members, including Hess and General Keitel. Then he summoned his tame Reichstag, and once more the world heard his bellowing voice, proclaiming his own innocence and the wickedness of his foes. Said Adi: 

"“I desire nothing other than to be the first soldier of the German Reich. In evidence of this I have again put on that old coat which was the most sacred and the most dear to me of all. I will not take it off until the victory is ours or—I shall not live to see the end. If anything should happen to me in this struggle, my first successor will be Party Member Göring. Should anything happen to Party Member Göring, his successor is Party Member Hess. It will be your duty to follow these men as Führer with the same blind loyalty and obedience as you follow me.” 

"In Mein Kampf this master orator and statesman had laid down the rule that when you told a lie it should be a big one, as that was easier to believe. So now he told “his” deputies—“meine Herren,” he called them: “Last night for the first time Poland opened fire on our own territory, this time with regular troops. From five forty-five this morning this fire has been returned”—and so on. He told them, truthfully—since falsehood must always be mixed with some truth—that he had spent more than six years in building up the German armed forces, and that “during this time more than ninety billion marks have been devoted to this purpose.” The statesmen of the democracy must have shuddered as they heard that figure, equal to more than thirty-five billion dollars, or, as the British would have said, nine thousand million pounds. Where was the statesman who would have dared to ask any parliament, congress, or other legislative body to vote such a sum for armaments?"

Lanny couldn't do anything in London and decided to leave for Wickthorpe, but London was being evacuated and he took some children in the car with a teacher, and delivered them at Wickthorpe schoolhouse, so it was necessary to cleanse the car and bathe thoroughly before he could allow Frances to come near, and she was puzzled about why the poor couldn't keep clean. He spoke to Irma about joining the British side after wrapping up his work in U.S., and she too had the same reaction, that he should help the foreign office. He found it wasn't easy to get a passage home, but his father's lawyer helped and got him a seat on the new Clipper service to fly next day. 
...............................................................................


Lanny arrived in Washington D.C. via a train to Bristol, a flight to Foynes in Ireland, a small boat to Clipper that rose in flight from ocean to N.Y. across Atlantic and then a flight to Washington D.C. that he was put on by the government as soon as he called Baker, with priority. Lanny met FDR, who wanted to hear every detail and then have his thoughts. He discussed the future of the agent, and said he could still meet people in France and Britain, and meet Germans in Switzerland, and mail the reports via U.S. embassy in France, with Bill Bullitt taken into confidence about his role. As to mailing reports from Britain, to make similar arrangements, 

"“Joe Kennedy is a terribly pessimistic soul,” remarked the smiling President. “He takes his ambassadorial duties hard, and is certain that this is the end of the world. He called me on the telephone just after the British decided to enter the war, and I almost saw his tears.""

So it was arranged, Lanny would mail his reports in double envelopes marbled Zaharoff 103 to Bill Bullitt in France, Joe Kennedy in London and Harrison in Switzerland, depending on which country he was in, and they would be instructed to send it personal to President in diplomatic pouch. There was a problem about passport, but Lanny suggested they include his name as his father's business agent, which would be natural and nazis wouldn't suspect anything. 

He was invited by Reverdy Holdenhurst to visit on his way back to N.Y., and was informed that Lizbeth would have her debut before the Detaze show set to open in October. Holdenhurst invited him to join them on the next cruise via Panama canal to South China seas, but again, Lanny declined, pleading work for his father, and his ties to Europe where his daughter in England and his mother at Riviera were. He met Zoltan Kertezsi in N.Y., and discussed the Detaze show and Zoltan's plans. Zoltan had decided to settle in U.S. and get citizenship, since Hungary had gone Nazi. 

Lanny went to Newcastle and it happened to be a day when the library board met in the house, Esther being the president. Meeting was behind closed doors, so he went to the sunroom, intending to read quietly. 

"Entering quietly, he stopped, for at one of the windows he observed a woman sitting, directly in front of a panel of rose-colored brocade by the French windows. The rich brown of her softly dressed hair was accentuated by the background of the room. The shadows interspersed by the afternoon sun were rosy, and the pale blue dress she wore was splashed with the color of red roses; there was, by chance, a basket of coral roses on the table behind her. She was absorbed in reading a book, and not aware of his entrance, so he was at liberty to look at her."

He was unsure about how much of it was deliberate effect, but she looked familiar. 

"Did some obscure sixth sense warn the woman there in the sunlit corner that someone was gazing at her? She looked up from her book, and at the same instant Lanny realized who she was—the librarian whom he had taken for an automobile ride on a moonlit midsummer’s night a little more than a year ago! Miss Priscilla Hoyle, of the Newcastle Public Library, daughter of the Puritans and prim official of a proper small town—but what a change in her! When last he had seen her, in an ancient and rather dingy place of employment, she had been pale and bloodless, or so he had thought; subdued and unobtrusive, a virgin in the temple of Minerva, goddess of wisdom; a lady of an age, or appearance of age, which had not changed for a decade and might not change for another. Or so he had thought. 

"But now she had color in her cheeks, or at any rate on them; now she wore a delightful little toque of red roses, and a dress to harmonize with the saucy headpiece. To Lanny’s expert eye it was apparent that the dress had been made at home; but even so, it was somewhat elegant and decidedly gay; he wondered, was that the way the town librarian was supposed to get herself up for the monthly meetings of the Board? Or was it only for special occasions, when the meeting took place at the home of the town’s “first lady”?"

They talked, Lanny making it natural. 

"Suddenly she surprised him with a question: “Tell me, Mr. Budd, do you believe in God?” 

"There had been a time in old New England when this question had been widely discussed in the best social circles, but nowadays God had been replaced by sex as a topic of polite conversation. Lanny felt it necessary to fence. “You mean the Old Testament God? Jehovah of the thunders, Lord God of battles?” 

"“I mean a purposive, creative Intelligence,” said the librarian. 

"Lanny stayed on the defensive. “Why do you ask me that?” 

"“I have been impressed by the books which you donated to the library—those of Jeans and Eddington.” 

"“Oh, I see. Those books surely give one a lot to think about.” 

"“I should be interested to hear your thoughts, Mr. Budd.” 

"Lanny ventured: “Whenever I try to think about God I run into contradictions, and begin to suspect the limitations of my own mind. You know the argument of John Stuart Mill, that God cannot be both all-powerful and all-good, or why would He permit evil in the world. This war, for example.”

"“But this war is made by men, Mr. Budd.” 

"“Yes, but the men were made by God; and surely, if you or I had been consulted in the making, we would have put less hatred into their hearts.” 

"“You and I can choose between hate and love in our own hearts, can we not? Without this right to choose we would be mere cogs in a wheel. Without evil we could have no freedom. Until recently modern science has required me to believe that the universe had been wound up like a clock and would go on running mechanically, regardless of anything I might do. But now modern physics permits me, even encourages me, to believe that this is a mental universe, and that my choosing between good and evil may be a part of the process which constitutes God.” 

"“I see that you have really read those books,” remarked the man. He added, gallantly: “I feel sure you are much better equipped than I to understand them.”"

Lanny and Miss Hoyle were asked to join others in the meeting, and Lanny spoke about a book on hypnotherapy that she had recommended but was turned down, telling them he would read and donate it, and further speaking about hypnotism and offering to do it to them with their consent. Esther invited her to stay for dinner after the meeting, and later asked him to take her home. Lanny was aware that this was tacit approval and acceptance by Esther if he chose Miss Hoyle, and was aware of having been inconsiderate before. He aid his hand on hers, but she withdrew hers, and they spoke about his having behaved the way he did, during the previous first meeting and since. 

"“When you departed and did not return, I was terribly humiliated. I felt that I had been the toy of a moment. But I am not a toy; I am an adult woman.” 

"“I was away because of urgent duties, Miss Hoyle.” 

"“The postal service was still working. But that is not what I am speaking of. I broke down and confided in my mother, who is a wise and kind woman, and was beautiful in her time. She told me the secret of her life—that my father had deserted her for another woman. This was when I was a small child, and I was told that my father was dead, and I always believed it. So you see, you are not the only man who exercised his privilege to sample and reject too casually. Sex cannot be casual. A woman may give the best she has, but when she reaches the age when her charms begin to fade, she confronts with terror the possibility that the man will feel the need of fresh stimulations, and will leave her with an empty heart and perhaps an empty home. What do you, as a man, suggest as a remedy for this form of tragedy?” 

"“I don’t know,” admitted the son of Budd-Erling; “unless you women stand together, and succeed in teaching men some ideals of loyalty.” 

"“The feminist movement got off on the wrong track,” said the town librarian. “It took up the foolish notion that women should imitate the casual relationship between the sexes which men have always found to be to their advantage.”"

Lanny thought about the various feminist women he'd met, who had been different. 

"Priscilla Hoyle believed in love as a spiritual expansion, a means of escaping from the limitations of the individual ego; as she explained it to Lanny he wondered if he had not been missing something all these years that he had spent in the playgrounds of Europe."

He thought about the women he'd loved, and Marie De Bruyne was the only one with this quality that she'd shared with him. Priscilla Hoyle rejected him because she said he'd become tired of her due to his world and hers being different, and she'd hate herself. He thought of others who had rejected him, and they had done so for different reasons, for being a countless or highly paid famous actress. This was the first time he was rejected before even an affair. He took her home. She gave her hand with a remark about his knowing what to do if this were Europe,  and he kissed it. 

"Lanny drove away experiencing pangs of conscience. Here, it seemed to him, was a woman whose personality embodied those ideal things which he craved. It pleased him not at all to have her thinking that he considered the town librarian as his social inferior; but he was not at liberty to give her the slightest hint of his democratic sentiments. He had to tell himself once more that a presidential agent was something less than a man, and could never be a satisfactory husband. Incidentally, he reminded himself of a basic principle having to do with the motorcar—that when the car is in motion, the driver should keep his two hands firmly gripped upon the steering wheel."
...............................................................................


U.S. was firm about never joining in any European war, and Newcastle had been united in this, but now the embargo on export of arms and ammunition to either side had negative effect on the economy of the town, and people wanted the embargo lifted for Britain and France. They had never liked nazis, and now that they had made a pact with Bolsheviks they had lost the only use they'd had.   

"Now that the Nazis had made a deal with Russia, the old-time New Englanders had no further use for them, and argued vehemently that the so-called “Neutrality Act” favored Germany, which couldn’t get any American goods anyhow. Their arguments were supported by the Poles, who had their share of the town’s immigrant population. It was opposed by the Irish Catholics, whose greatest pleasure in life was inflicting harm upon the British Empire. The Irish all turned into fighting pacifists, and were joined by the Germans and most of the Italians, also the French-Canadians, who were Catholics before they were French.

"All day and half the night the people of Newcastle heard by voice and read on the printed page the horrible details of the destruction of an unoffending nation in a period of eighteen days: armies being slaughtered and driven in rabble rout; cities turned into blazing infernos or heaps of rubble; fleeing civilians bombed and machine-gunned on roads; invading barbarians bringing with them whole trainloads of scientists, especially educated for the wiping out of a national culture."

Robbie again discussed Lanny joining him, since he couldn't very well argue that he was going into war zones to sell paintings, so Lanny told him in confidence abòut his work in information, not going any further about who he was working for, and his using the father's concern as a cover for foreseeable future, since this would be less suspicious to nazis than having his passport cleared by state. Robbie said he'd suspected it for a while, and had no problem if people thought Lanny represented him.  

Lanny visited Hansi and Bess, and went to their Carnegie hall concert with them. This couple who were united by music in their love and in minds by their ideology was beginning to have rifts, since Hansi couldn't wrap his mind around Russian pact with nazis, but Hess was firm about the party being never wrong, so much so they came to agree by the end of their U.S. tour to not speak of politics.  

"All through the leftwing movement it was like that. Ralph Bates wrote: “I am getting off the train”—and his sentiments were echoed by thousands; everybody was arguing furiously, and marriages and lifelong friendships were broken. Some lost their faith and never regained it; some died brokenhearted, and some took their own lives. Verily it was, as Trudi Schultz had said, “a bad time to be born”!"

Lanny called Forrest Quadratt, who was in feverish activity about stopping all trade with Britain and France, and making everyone see Germany not letting any vessel ply to Britain or France without torpedoing or German submarines patrolling us coasts was only right. Lanny talked about his visit to Berghof and Quadratt wanted him to speak to large assemblies about it, but Lanny refused. 

"Having heard this most inspiring story, he talked freely in return. All true American patriots were working day and night like himself to keep the Neutrality Act on the statute books. They were calling meetings all over the country, and preparing to send out literally millions of congressional speeches through that happy franking privilege which they enjoyed; before they got through they would cause telegrams by the tens of thousands to come flooding in upon those Congressmen and Senators who had not heard the people’s voice or who refused to heed it. Only yesterday evening Quadratt had stepped from an airplane after flying to Detroit to present a new idea to Father Coughlin. It was the mothers of America who would suffer most in the event that America was dragged into a foreign war, and it was the mothers of America who were going to appeal to Congress to save their boys from this ghastly fate. Mothers’ organizations were going to spring up spontaneously all over the land, and embattled mothers were going to descend upon Congress the moment it assembled. This master propagandist smiled slyly as he pictured the screaming and wailing he would create in the offices of those statesmen who dared to support the administration program.

"Quadratt had, so he claimed, a mailing list of a hundred and fifty thousand names, and seldom a day passed that he didn’t write a speech for some Senator or Congressman to deliver. Then it would be printed as part of the Congressional Record, reprinted at a nominal cost by the Government Printing Office, and mailed out to these names, and to other lists supplied by Nazi or near-Nazi organizations scattered all over the country. In addition, Quadratt had a string of pamphlets in his own name, and various books published under pen names; the multiple author showed Lanny a row of them, and it was really funny. Quadratt is the German word for “Square”; but when this German-American crusader resorted to camouflage, he chose the most fashionable English names that ever came out of Ouida or Marie Corelli, and always three of them in a row—Percy Montmorency Raleigh, or Cecil Northumberland Oglethorpe."
...............................................................................


Lanny took one of the cars of his father to set out with Göring's and other paintings, and visited Murchison in Pittsburgh, to show them in their hall and gave a discourse about them. Murchisons had invited their friends too and several were sold before he set out again, visiting relatives of Sophie and Margy,  and finally had one left specially for Mrs Fotheringay who collected art featuring babies and children. Everywhere he showed a few Detazes and mentioned the coming exhibition in Baltimore, and so a few more were set up. He renewed the acquaintance of the people he'd met through Forrest Quadratt on the last trip. He met the Fords and was introduced to the son and his art collection. 

"Very gently he told this middle-aged man who was still a youth in mind that the acquiring of a great art collection was one of the most difficult achievements in the world. Many who offered themselves as advisers were incompetent, and many of the dealers were the shrewdest of rascals. Lanny quoted the saying of the great art authority, Dr. Bode, that Rembrandt had painted seven hundred paintings during his lifetime and that ten thousand of them were in America. Lanny added that even when old masters were genuine they were not necessarily good, for there were few painters who had not done mediocre work now and then. Having planted these little seeds, Lanny produced his Detazes, and delivered one of his suave lectures on the difference between sound art and fraudulent. When the evening was over he had given Zoltan’s address and obtained the promise of both Edsel and his mother to sponsor a Detaze show in Detroit during the winter."

He came upon Reubens, Indiana, on a detour driving back from Chicago,  and recalled Ezra Hackabury and the yacht trip to Greece with the group including Marcel and Beauty and her friends. He looked up Ezra Hackabury and they had a good time talking of past, and Ezra asked about his ex wife Edna. 

Here the author seems to forget that in an earlier volume Edna was again alone, Fitzlaing having passed on, and was revisiting Margy, perhaps around the time of Marceline having her debut in England. Here he has Lanny tell Ezra that they are in Brighton, and Fitzlaing must have a desk job now. A rare discrepancy, but then Upton Sinclair does have so many characters enter and exit. 

Ezra was shown the Detazes by lanny, and he talked for reminiscing this time. Ezra had purchased a couple and hung them in the yacht, which he gave his wife Edna at the divorce, and now he asked about it. He liked the works and Lanny offered to give him the paintings as gifts. Lanny said he'd after all taken Marcel on the cruise, where he painted so many of the works, so it seemed only fair. But Ezra said he'd visit the exhibition when it's nearby, and purchase half a dozen and hang them on his modest home walls, and leave them to the town for an art museum.  

Back in N.Y. Lanny was invited by Quadratt to attend a meeting over dinner at Miss Van Zandt home, where congressman Hamilton Fish spoke about having been a guest of Ribbentrop at Fuschl, and opined that poles were wrong and paying for it. Quadratt used the cranking privilege of the congressman to mail his propaganda, and Lanny had included this in his reports. 

...............................................................................


Lanny arrived for the Detaze show in Baltimore and for the debut party for Lizbeth, who was beautiful in her gown. The show was a success, and Lanny worried that too many paintings were sold. The exhibition extended another week, but Lanny decided he had to return to Europe before it was difficult. He told Reverdy, who invited him for a private and frank talk, about Lizbeth. Lanny appreciated it, and said his lifestyle had already broken one marriage due to making his wife unhappy about his long absences and uncertainties, and he'd vowed to not marry. Reverdy attempted his best to offer Lanny everything he could, but it was to no avail, and lanny allowed him to suspect he was involved with a married woman, but Reverdy nevertheless asked him to visit her when back in U.S. next. 

Lanny visited FDR before going to Europe, and they talked of the public pressure about the new legislation regarding trade across oceans. Lanny questioned if it really was public or pressure groups. 

"“We have very few Congressmen and Senators who represent the public,” was the reply. “Most of them represent the interests which put up their campaign funds last time and are expected to do it next time.”"

Lanny got his instructions about the information wanted - what next, especially about cartels. 

"“Apparently,” said F.D., “people lie freely to those they know to be government officials, but sometimes they tell the truth to their friends.”

"Finally, an important detail, he told Lanny how to get his passports; his father was to call a certain man in the War Department, and whatever he asked for would be furnished without his having to come to Washington. Lanny would have passage on the Clipper, believed to be safer than the liners."

Lanny drove to Newcastle to return the car. He couldn't tell Robbie why he was going to Europe, but could do his errands, and Robbie wanted the same information FDR did. Robbie's opinion of FDR had turned around completely, since he was going to have British and French vessels come right to Newcastle river to carry Budd Erling planes back where they were needed.

The British and French visiting him with orders were told he had his plant working to capacity for next six months around the clock before he could begin for their orders, and they wanted him to expand. This had happened with his father's concern which suffered when the war was over and outstanding orders scrapped, so Robbie had different formula, they could put up the money to build the plant and he'd work it, and at end of work would have the option to buy it. 
...............................................................................


Lanny was brought back on the same Clipper and first went to Wickthorpe. Irma wouldn't mention it if she longed for the security of Long Island, of Shore Acres, but having modernised her castle, now saw its lawns turned to farming and the quiet village overrun with children refugees from slums of cities, and her daughter as curious as they about each other. Lanny had to tell her Frances couldn't be kept away from life forever. But he had to rein himself. Wickthorpe set and its Earl and Countess were amonst the appeasers, and they wanted to speak to Lanny about being a conduit to nazis and their friends in France. The war was a mistake, but the effort must be seen coming from them now, not from England. 

Lanny called Rick from London and just said Bienvenu, and Rick came, so they could speak in privacy without being seen. Alfy came too, he knew about Lanny. He was in RAF and was fighting Nazi friends there too. 

"Alfy had flown one of last year’s Budd-Erling models, and reported that it was better than the Messerschmitt, but not so good as the Spitfire. “Thank God we had men in the force who were on their toes!” he said. Lanny could assure him that Robbie’s most recent model was both faster and more heavily armed; also, that it had a single-gear supercharger that was a whiz, though he couldn’t drop the smallest hint of how that marvel had been achieved. He could report that the plant was working day and night, and there was a good chance of its being enlarged."

Lanny's flight to France was facilitated by Ceddy, but Lanny kept his status unofficial and as representing his father. He put up at Crillon, and Schneider called him for lunch and talked with him about various things, including his father's capacity, and lanny going to berlin via Switzerland. Lanny pointed out that in order to do so he should know the French intentions. 

"The Communist Party had proclaimed that this was one more capitalist war, and that the fatherland of French workers was the Soviet Union. The government replied by outlawing the Party and throwing hundreds of its leaders into jail. The effect of this was to deprive Lanny of one of his sources of entertainment as well as information; for Uncle Jesse Blackless disappeared, together with his wife. The police raided his tenement rooms and seized his papers and put a seal on the door. His nephew might perhaps have found him if he had made inquiries in the right quarter, but he couldn’t afford to advertise his Red connection. He guessed that Jesse would make his way to Moscow—and this guess proved to be correct.

"It was a matter of no slight importance to la patrie that its most important political party, with several million adherents, had gone “underground” and was opposing the national effort. The Reds were the most tireless propagandists, and wherever in the factories a worker grumbled at the 72-hour week, there would be a “comrade” to whisper: “This is one more capitalist war.” Wherever in the trenches a poilu complained of monotonous food and two-and-one-half cents a day compensation, there would be someone to direct his bitterness against those sales cochons—not the boches, but the politicians at home. 

"And of course the enemy agents were at work day and night. Those of German nationality had got out, but they had established an elaborate machine and put Frenchmen in charge. Lanny knew who many of these persons were, and he knew that the money was pouring in by way of Switzerland, Belgium, and other neutral countries, including Lanny’s own. The Bank of International Settlements in Zurich was still functioning, and the businessmen were still insisting that “business as usual” was an honorable motto. The French reptile press was still getting its “envelopes,” and there were even papers which had no circulation, but were printed in large editions and given away. Needless to say, these were all humanitarian in tone, emphasizing the fact that war is a very evil thing, and that mothers love their sons and do not like to have them slaughtered for the benefit of les bellicistes, the warmongers, mostly political adventurers and merchants of death."

So much so their pamphlets came to the French soldiers at front, too, insinuating that the English soldiers in France were with wives of the french soldiers at the front, and the English might not leave. Lanny visited De Bruyne family and Denis talked to him freely as his father's messenger. 

"What especially interested Lanny was Denis’s revelation of his younger son’s activities. Charlot’s army post was close to the Swiss border, and this was no accident, but had been planned. Some five hundred officers had been involved in the Cagoulard conspiracy of a year or two ago, and many of these were now conniving at the smuggling of German-printed leaflets and pamphlets across the Swiss border and their distribution to the troops. Said Denis: “The Reds have had their ‘underground’ in Germany and have been sending in literature from France for the past six or seven years. Now we have taken a leaf out of their notebook.” 

"A dangerous business in wartime, Lanny opined; but the father said, No, they had grown too strong to be prosecuted; they had too many friends in Parliament and in the Cabinet. The authorities had arrested Marcel Déat for circulating anti-war literature but hadn’t dared bring him to trial. Several high-ranking generals were sympathetic to the rebels, including Marshal Pétain, who was now in Madrid as French ambassador, trying to work out with the German ambassador there the terms on which this idiotic war might be brought to an end. Once that was done, the overthrow of the government would be easy."

The German agents of various agencies operating in Paris had returned to Germany and Marceline had gone with them. That solidified Lanny's status for the appeasers. He flew to Madrid for his fortieth birthday, and saw the city devastation. 

"Carpenters and masons, steelworkers and miners, were dead or dying by the thousands, and did not contribute to the restoration of the shattered cities of Spain."

Lanny had come to see Marshal Pétain, ambassador of France in Madrid, at the suggestion of Denis De Bruyne.

"Henri Philippe Benoni Omer Joseph Pétain took a paternal attitude toward the people of France; he loved them, and knew what was good for them, and had been divinely appointed to tell them what to do and see that they did it. The old gentleman was as pious as Franco himself, and according to the same creed of Holy Mother Church. He was the well-nigh unanimous choice of the factions which sought to overthrow the evil, atheistic Republic; the Croix de Feu, the Jeunesse Patriote, even the Cagoulards operated in his name, and looked to him to take charge and rule. Like Franco they had a hanging list, or shooting list—or perhaps they would bring out Madame Guillotine again, if there was time. They would make a clean sweep of all republicans, the democrats, the Socialists and Communists, Syndicalists and Anarchists, atheists and Freemasons, and la patrie would once more become pious and happy, as she had been two centuries ago. 

"The old hero talked freely in his quavering voice. He was filled with a sense of destiny, the consciousness that the fate of Christian Europe hung upon the negotiations he was carrying on with the German ambassador. Matters were urgent—for of course the Führer could not be expected to wait indefinitely. The Germans were being fair, even gracious; they were not standing upon formalities or prestige. France didn’t have to sue for peace, didn’t even have to propose peace; all that was wanted was that sensible men should settle the basis upon which two great powers were to live together in future. Britain was not excluded; on the contrary, the same fair terms were being offered to her, here in Madrid and through other channels. The integrity of the British Empire would be guaranteed forever, and all that was asked was recognition that Eastern Europe constituted Germany’s sphere of influence. ... he talked to the Franco-American agent as if he were a son, introduced him to several of his advisers, and gave him the entree to the Franco-German-Hispano junta which was pouring Nazi-Fascist propaganda into the Spanish and Portuguese Americas, as well as the United States."

Lanny flew back to Paris and mailed his report, anonymously, via Bill Bullitt,  the U.S. ambassador to France. 

"It was quite amusing to meet the ambassador at a smart reception, and to be coldly rebuked for his pro-Nazi sentiments, rumors of which had reached Bullitt from several quarters, he said."

Lanny denied it with a smile and said he was an art expert, but Bill wasn't pacified, and it was sad for Lanny who was lonely, but couldn't talk to Bill who was known radical. Lanny called on Emily Chattersworth who said her health was failing, but her friends were worried because Les Forêts lay on path of  Schlieffen plan of invasion of France. Lanny advised her to go to Riviera soon, else the route would be crowded and cars might be commandeered. He had promised Beauty to be home for Xmas and went. 

He had been careful about Laurel Creston who was at Bienvenu, so as to not give Beauty any reason to question him, and Laurel had followed suit. Parsifal Dingle had been conducting experiments with the two mediums, and had made remarkable progress. 

"The Côte d’Azur was almost as favourable a place as Paris for activities of a a presidential agent." 

Riviera connects Italy to Spain, both with fascist governments at outset of the war, and is moreover playground of the wealthy and the glitterati, so Lanny met them everywhere. Mediterranean moreover being vital, all sorts of spies and agents were around. 

"A division of the French army was at Mentone, ready to block the road along the Riviera, and troops were guarding all the passes through the Alpes Maritimes.

"Lanny cultivated his Spanish friends and picked up the gossip that fell from their dinner tables. They considered that the Führer had compromised his cause by his deal with Red Russia, and thus Spain was no longer bound by her signature to the Anti-Comintern Pact. Their country, like Italy, could be more useful as a neutral; they whispered concerning U-boat bases on the Bay of Biscay, Spanish vessels smuggling fuel to U-boats at sea, and radio stations set up by their German friends in Spanish and Portuguese harbors.

"Then, too, there was news from the Near East, the Balkans and Turkey and the Arab lands. Couriers came by ships, and messages by secret wireless; it was all supposed to be hush-hush to the last degree, but somehow things leaked, and if you went to the right social gatherings and helped to get the right persons drunk, you could pick up surprising information. Lanny was kept busy writing reports, so many that he became uneasy about mailing them to the American Embassy in Paris. He took to addressing them to an inconspicuous “Mr. W. C. Bullitt, 2 rue Gabriel, Paris.” He never mailed one in Juan, but drove into Cannes and dropped them into some inconspicuous box; now and then for one of special importance he would visit the larger city of Nice."

Laurel Creston read books from his library and studied her own capabilities as medium, keeping discreet and never alone with Lanny. Beauty questioned Lanny if he was in love with her, and finally said she was much more suitable for Lanny. He was touched, Laurel being the first woman she approved of who wasn't an heiress. But he was scolding himself for being attracted to three women when he could be unsafe by marrying, or attaching himself to, one. 

"He had thought it absurd to be half in love with two women, and now, apparently, he was one-third in love with three! Laurel, he admitted, had turned out to be a lovely woman; but so had Lizbeth, and so had Priscilla Hoyle, to his great surprise. How happy could I be with one of them, were t’other two charmers away!" ...............................................................................


Ribbentrop and Ciano feud about promises of the former about German help to Italy, and the lack of will to keep them, came out, and Italians claimed they could take whatever on their own. Soviets attacked Finland, and those that hadn't cared about Spain clamoured about it, but official military help could put Scandinavia in danger of German attack. British and French organised a volunteer army to be sent, but news came that the Finn were in Moscow suing for peace. 

Spring of 1940 brought only fear of war to adults of Europe. Americans had a new catchphrase "phony war", but Lanny had seen German leaders get Germany ready for seven years. 

"The whole industrial power of one of the three or four greatest nations on earth had been turned to the manufacture of deadly weapons. “Guns before butter,” Göring had said—and be sure that he meant it with all the power of his driving will. Now, at the end of the eighth winter, the armies were lined up at the frontiers, the men trained like athletes for a race, the plans completed to the last scratch of a pen. The planes were in their underground hangars; the tanks hidden in the forests, or in fields, camouflaged as haystacks or sheds; the shells piled in rows like village streets. From the factories were pouring rivers of new planes, new tanks, new shells, everything that could be used in war, and very little else—just enough to keep life going in eighty million Nazi robots, plus the slaves they had already taken, and the millions more for whom they had the pens already constructed."

Lanny met people, but the only way to know about definite news of war was to visit Berghof, and he wanted memory of Elvirita Jones to wither from their minds; also it was risking whether Gestapo had connected dots and knew it was the Laurel Creston they were looking for who had vanished from Berlin. He had almost decided on going to Switzerland with Madame Zyszynski and taking her to Berghof, but he got a letter from Monck, telling him in code, that he had news about war. He had to go immediately, and Lauren said she should return to N.Y., which Lanny arranged by getting her passage on an American liner fron Marseille. They arranged to keep in touch. 

"So the pair bade each other farewell. “You have taught me a great deal,” said the woman, “and I shall never cease to be grateful to you. I hope we may always be friends.” 

"“Indeed, yes,” was the reply. “May I write to you?” 

"“I hope you will. I don’t know what my address will be, but I will write you to Bienvenu. Also, you can always reach me in care of the Bluebook. They have accepted another story.” She didn’t tell him what it was about; but she did say: “I want you to know that my eyes have not been shut while I have been here. I think I know what you are doing, and I honor you for it. Be sure that I will never drop a hint of it to any living soul. Take care of yourself and good luck to you.” 

"“Thank you,” said the P.A. “I, too, have thought a lot about you, and am grateful for what you have done, and for what you have just said.”"

Lanny went to Geneva and saw Monck in the public library and went out; they had a brief moment, after walking around blocks to ensure no surveillance, to make an appointment for rendezvous at night. Lanny met Sidney Armstrong and his family and later the two spoke, and listened to radio. They heard Churchill say nobody could have peace as long as nazis were around.

"The vile ones had sunk two Norwegian merchants ships that day, and had made no effort to aid the helpless seamen. That made close to a hundred Scandinavian vessels sunk in defiance of civilized practice."

Lanny met Monck at night and they talked after usual precautions about making sure they were alone. 

""Germany is going to seize Norway within the next week or ten days.”

"“And what comes then?” 

"“A rush through Holland and Belgium; the old Schlieffen plan—but this time they will not make the mistakes which Kluck made.” 

"“You believe they can break the Maginot Line?” 

"“I know they believe it, and I know they have been devising new weapons and rehearsing teams of men to perform precise and scientifically calculated duties. Unless the French are doing an extraordinary intelligence job, it will go badly with them.” 

"“I doubt very much if they are doing anything of the sort. They are in a shocking state of morale.” 

"“Are they going to make peace?” 

"“I don’t think they are going to do anything definite; only quarrel among themselves until Der Tag arrives.” 

"“And the British?” 

"“They will fight when they have to, and they will certainly not make peace. The government that tried it would be thrown out.” 

"“And America?” 

"“Don’t count upon my country for anything but trade. It will take a revolution in public sentiment to bring help from us.” 

"“Even if the Nazis take Paris?” 

"“That’s a long way off, my friend. At some point Americans would be frightened into giving help, but no one can guess what that point is.” 

"“Tell them this,” said the man of the underground. “If they do not give it, Europe will belong to the Nazis.”"

Lanny told him he would take a train to Paris and thence fly to London, after his having established in Geneva that he was looking for business, and was careful responding to Monck's query about Laurel Creston, saying only that last he heard she was leaving for N.Y.; he gave a sum of money he had brought to Monck, this time out of what Monck had entrusted him with in N.Y., and established code for further communications. 

"“Will there be a chance of your finding out when the Wehrmacht plans to move against France?” 

"“There is a very good chance.” 

"“All right. There is a French painter of war scenes, Meissonier. When you know definitely that the move is to be made, write me that you have one of his works. You can say that you have taken an option on it, for a week, or a month, or whatever the time is.” 

“It will not be a long time, I fear,”"

Lanny booked his flight to London first thing after arriving at his hotel in Paris, and mailed his report from a mail box outside after preparing it and walking out. He bought separate stationary and used a rented typewriter to send an anonymous note to the Norwegian ambassador in Paris, as well, since his report to FDR would take three to four days to arrive. He called Rick on arrival and they met at the predestined place, and discussed how to get Lanny's information to the right people without exposing Lanny, and decided on Rick involving his father without mentioning Lanny but saying it was from German underground. Sir Alfred Pomeroy-Nielson would pick a suitable candidate from his connections to bring the information to light. 

Lanny called Ceddy and was invited to dine at Carlton Club with Ceddy and Albany, with three or for others, to tell about what he'd heard in Madrid and Paris. He wouldnt expose his information from German underground to the appeasers, as Ceddy and Wickthorpe set generally were, but could give opinions. 

"Said the guest: “I am surely no military authority, but it seems to me that Germany’s best move right now would be to seize Norway.” 

"“But Lanny!” exclaimed his lordship. “That would just be taking on another war!” 

"“They wouldn’t count the Norwegians, because they are a peaceful people, not very heavily armed, and I suppose they could be surprised. The Nazis would figure that wherever they went to fight, you would have to follow them.” 

"“Yes, but that would be our kind of war—a naval war.” 

"“I’m not so sure about that. If they seized the Norwegian airports, it would be an air war, and they would have land-based aviation against your ships. If they got settled in those fjords, and got them mined, you’d have the devil’s own time rooting them out. And think what submarine harbors they would make!” 

"“The Germans have their hands full in front of the Maginot Line,” announced Gerald Albany. “They’re not going off on any side adventures.” Gerald’s father was a clergyman, and spoke as God’s deputy, without fear of contradiction. This attribute was not supposed to be hereditary, but it might be “catching,” and Gerald had caught at least a mild form of it."

Lanny took a train to Wickthorpe and had time to play with Frances, who asked about the war. Ceddy came at weekend and confirmed the news about Norway that Lanny had given him as personal opinion. Lanny noticed that familiar faces were missing from usual weekend gatherings at Wickthorpe, because the host and hostess's appeasing attitude no longer sat well or could be tolerated by most. Irma was upset with her envisioned great career for her husband going up a blind alley, and Lanny found her soliciting his advice gauche. The refugee children were doing better, but Frances was still not allowed to mix, although her mother was expecting again after having already given an heir to Wickthorpe and Frances no longer had as many millions as before, and would have less after she had another half sibling. Lanny mailed a report from the next town after a walk, via Joe Kennedy through diplomatic pouch as arranged, and stayed on for a bit, visiting Fanny and her entourage. 

"Lanny suggested: “Let’s try the BBC.” 

"Nobody could object, in these times. He turned the dial, just in time to catch a bulletin: at five-fifteen that morning German troops had crossed the border of Denmark unresisted and were occupying the country. At the same time German warships and transports had entered the principal harbors of Norway and were taking possession of them. At Narvik a dozen destroyers had entered in a snowstorm, had torpedoed two Norwegian gunboats with the loss of all on board, had seized British vessels in the harbor and landed troops. At Trondheim, Bergen, Stavanger and Kristiansund it had been much the same. At Oslo the invaders had seized the harbor and also the airport, and were believed to be taking control of the city. The surprise had been complete, and the resistance gallant but probably ineffectual.

"The invasion began against six ports. German merchant ships came in, supposedly in ballast, but really loaded with Nazi troops and weapons. They had sent their spies and secret agents ahead and had everything planned with true German Gründlichkeit. They had charts of all the channels and minefields; they knew where the arsenals were, the airports, the oil storage depots, the telephone exchanges, the radio stations. The troops, many of them, spoke Norwegian, for the reason that, during the last war, the kindly Norwegians had accepted thousands of refugee children, had taken them into their homes and treated them as members of the family. Now they paid a return visit, in the role of thieves and murderers. 

"Everything went precisely on schedule. The troops emerged from the ships and seized the strategic places, while at the same time German warships came into the fjords, destroying whatever vessels or fortifications attempted resistance. At Trondheim the warships surrounded themselves with a fleet of small Norwegian vessels, so that the forts hesitated to open fire. In the great Oslo fjord several German vessels were sunk, but the troops came ashore, while the populace stared in helpless incredulity. Since the Norwegian government refused to yield to the invaders, fighting began and the small Norwegian army retreated to the north and east."

At Wickthorpe somebody was always listening to the radio and would turn it up as and when important. 

"Never since World War I had there been so many incidents, piling one on top of another. For example, the fighting at Narvik—that far northern fjord into which the Bessie Budd had sailed, at the head of which you heard day and night the sound of iron ore roaring down a chute from railroad cars into ships. Here had come a German expedition, supply ships guarded by half a dozen of the latest and largest destroyers; five smaller British destroyers dashed in during a snowstorm, barely missing the black rocks of the shore, and sank the supply ships and one of the enemy destroyers and left two others in flames. One British destroyer was sunk and one had to be beached; a third, crippled, managed to get away with the other two. 

"A few days later came nine British destroyers with the battleship Warspite, and wiped out seven German destroyers then in the fjord. Those were feats in the old tradition of Drake and mighty Nelson; but alas, they wouldn’t loosen the enemy’s hold on the country they had seized. The Germans dug in, and fleets of airplanes brought them supplies; it would take a real war to remove them; and did Britain have the ships and the men and the guns to spare?

"Margy came back from the Riviera, and Lanny spent a week-end with her. A curious phenomenon, how people were getting sorted out; there had been ardent appeasers at Bluegrass, but no more; for Margy’s stepson, the new Lord Eversham-Watson, had a sister married to a Polish landowner, now a refugee, and her dreadful stories had turned the place into a rallying point for the Germanophobes. Margy herself, the dowager, hated all wars and war-makers, but she kept quiet and didn’t count any more. Lanny, coming from a place where most men defended good old Neville and considered him a greatly wronged statesman, found himself in a place where everybody sang the praises of good old Winston, First Lord of the Admiralty and ninth lineal descendant of the Duke of Marlborough. Lanny took no sides, but listened attentively, and when he came back to London mailed another report in care of the American ambassador. 

"He wrote that the British would send an expedition, composed mainly of the troops which had been intended to aid the Finns. His guess was that they would try to take the port of Trondheim; later he revised this, and said that the port was too heavily mined; the expedition would land at fishing villages and try to take Trondheim from the land. “It is a race against time,” he wrote; “the Germans have reopened the Skagerrak and are sending in tanks and heavy guns, and soon will be able to repeat in Norway what they did in Poland. Their claims that they have bombed and sunk British capital ships are probably false, but these falsehoods may be partly unintentional—Göring’s airmen tend to see ships bigger than they are.” 

"What happened after that must have brought quiet satisfaction to the president of Budd-Erling Aircraft Corporation, who had been foretelling it to the brass hats of Britain, France and his own country for several years. The Germans did not have much success against the British capital fleet, but they showed the helplessness of troops ashore, or trying to get ashore, in the face of land-based aviation. The Nazis had the Norwegian airports, and were flying their planes to these ports and supplying them by air transports. Their flyers dived upon the fishing villages and knocked their wooden docks to flinders; they bombed the landing vessels and the supplies on the shore; they machine-gunned the troops wherever they tried to hide. The Luftwaffe had had seven years in which to practice all this, and they had told Lanny Budd exactly what they meant to do. 

"Alfy came back from an encounter with them, having flown from a British carrier to raid an enemy supply dump. His plane had been shot full of holes by German flyers and he had barely managed to reach an airfield that was still in Norwegian hands. He had had to make his way to the coast by land, and had boarded a British transport which was bombed three times on its way back to Scotland. That sounded like a long adventure, but the whole thing had taken less than ten days. It had cost this slender young aviator some twenty pounds in weight, and his hands trembled like an aged person’s. It wasn’t fear, he said; it was grief and rage—to see these dreadful events and be powerless to prevent them, to know that his native land had been outwitted and outguessed, and might be in jeopardy of her very existence, to say nothing of her imperial pride.

"What made matters worse was the fact that these difficulties had been in great part concealed from the public. Day after day reports were given out that troops were going ashore, that they were advancing, that the Norwegians were holding the enemy, and so on. Even Lanny believed some of it, and the disillusionment was all the greater when at last people realized the truth—that the Nazi-Fascists were scoring another triumph at very small cost. The list of these was getting to be a tax on the memory: Abyssinia and Albania and Spain, Austria and Czechoslovakia and Poland, and now Denmark and Norway. The end of it was beyond any man’s guessing, and certainly a long way off. Lanny sent a cablegram to his father, saying: “You may safely enlarge plant events make certain demand for product many years.” 

"England began to boil, after the fashion of a democratic nation. Englishmen demand that their government shall succeed, and when they see it failing they accept no excuses. There were huge meetings of protest in Trafalgar Square, and those licentious, irresponsible newspapers which had so greatly displeased Adolf Hitler began to please him even less. A bundle of them came to the castle every morning and another in the evening, and really, it made you embarrassed to spread them out, or to let anybody see you reading them—they were so impolite to august personalities and to principles revered in these renovated ancestral halls. 

"Outwardly, everything at Wickthorpe was peaceful and safe. The sheep grazed on the lovely wide lawns and the deer browsed on the tender young buds of the shrubbery; little Frances rode her pony, and watched her father play at bowls with the palish and undersized curate. But politically speaking, and intellectually, and spiritually, the castle was under siege. It was named in all the Leftist press, along with Cliveden, as a center and source of the appeasement, the cowardice, the downright treason which had plagued Britain’s public life and brought her to this shameful pass. Other persons might have a tendency to forget the list of humiliations, but a Liberal or Labor newspaper editor must keep it in large type on the wall in front of his desk, and never let an edition go to press without featuring it in news and editorials and cartoons."

Lanny realised that it took a stout heart to stand such trials, and Ceddy hadn't been raised to withstand hardships. 

"Now came these frightful shocks, one after another: battleships sunk by torpedoes, cruisers blasted by bombs, British soldiers forced to run like rabbits and hide in holes to escape streams of bullets from overhead. Even worse were the political shocks: the astonishing competence of the dictatorships, their speed and power, the paralyzing miasma which they poured out in the form of propaganda—brazen falsehood, cunning sophistication, which almost broke the heart of a lover of truth! How could anyone stand up against it, how believe in the possibility of righteousness, of its chances of survival in a world suddenly thrown back into barbarism?

"Lanny was especially interested in the reaction of the woman who had been his wife for six years, and whom he knew better than any other woman with the possible exception of his mother. Irma Barnes, Countess of Wickthorpe, had a stout heart, and was not plagued with a too-vivid imagination; but she, like his lordship, had had an easy life, and was accustomed to the idea that whatever she wanted would be handed to her on a silver platter. Now very certainly this wasn’t happening, and appeared as if it might never happen again. Hosts of enemies rose up against her, screaming at her—in print, if not by voice. Indeed, she had been advised not to let herself be driven through any working-class district, for her picture had been widely published and she might be recognized, and have the unpleasant experience of having a rotten egg or a dead cat thrown into her limousine. 

"England wasn’t just that green and pleasant land which had so attracted her that she wanted to own one of its picturesque old castles. England was a land of coal and iron, of heavy industry, and toiling masses who did not love their masters, but had their own ideas, their own press, their own leaders, wholly beyond the scope of Irma’s mind. Now they were rising up against the betrayers of democracy, and it was a most unpleasant, even terrifying experience. Irma had not been entirely unprepared for it, of course; there had been Munich, and before that Spain, and she had played hostess to statesmen who had discussed these events in her presence, explaining them and providing her with arguments. What she had not been prepared for was the failure of these eminent persons; she had assumed that they knew England and the outside world, and would take the necessary measures to control events. 

"But they had not done this; on the contrary, they had let the world slip out of their grasp, they had let things happen the opposite to the way they wished. They hadn’t made friends with Germany and got her into a war with Russia; they had let Germany divide Poland with Russia and then turn upon the West! The British Empire was being defied; actually, at this moment, Ceddy was reporting that they couldn’t save Norway because that treacherous rotter, Mussolini, was mobilizing his fleet and threatening the Suez Canal, which was Britain’s lifeline to India. So Britain’s battleships and carriers had to go to Alexandria instead of to Trondheim! And suppose Mussolini should attack them with his fleet of submarines—it might mean the end of the British Empire in a single night! 

"So here was this titled pair, rich and fashionable, sitting on the apex of the social pyramid, and inside them they were two frightened and bewildered human souls who saw their world beginning to crumble and had no idea what to do to prop it up. Things got so bad that Ceddy didn’t dare leave his office over the week-end, and Irma went to town so as to be near him and keep up his courage. Before she left she called her ex-husband over to the castle to ask him, would it do any good if she were to cable Robbie Budd, offering to sell some of her blue-chip stocks and put up the cash to pay for the immediate enlarging of the Budd-Erling plant!"

Lanny needed cheering up and called Rick, and the couple picked him up walking on the road to have a picnic by a stream. They talked about the events. Alfy was back with his squadron training younger batches, and Rick wanted to work at BBC but didn't think it would happen. He suggested Lanny talk to Churchill who was likely to replace Chamberlain, but Lanny thought it was a risk. Rick told a curious story about the personnel in British expedition to Norway carrying only salmon fishing gear in addition to prescribe equipment.

"Lanny said: “I have reason to believe that Hitler means to move on France as soon as he is secure in Norway. I have the hope of getting some definite information about it; and if so, I’ll get word to you.”"

He told about what the De Bruyne men had said about the Maginot line unlikely to hold, because heads of government and army hadn't expected war. 

"The situation was drastically worse than in the last war. Then Belgium had been an ally, and from the moment of the war’s outbreak their army had been one with the French. But this time the young King of the Belgians was an appeaser; he was more interested in his own country than in Poland, and he dreamed of keeping safe by letting the Nazis have a free hand in the East. The declaration of Belgian neutrality had been one of Hitler’s great diplomatic successes, very-little appreciated by the outside world. It left France with the northern part of her border exposed; the French armies could enter Belgium only after the German armies had done so, and would thus have no time to prepare positions."

Rick blamed the capitalist system for financing the goons and murderers, and thought they could kick out the political fascists; Lanny pointed out that this ast wasn't true, and the industrialists were worried, and Rick said it was their own fault. 
...............................................................................


"Nina drove them to the neighborhood of Wickthorpe, and put Lanny off by the roadside. When he entered his cottage, there was mail on his writing desk; a letter from Robbie—long delayed, because the British were holding up airmail for censorship in Bermuda, and they hadn’t been able to get things properly organized. Ordinarily he would have pounced on such a letter, but this one waited, for there was another, in a plain envelope, with a Swiss stamp and a French censorship label. “Mr. Lanning Prescott Budd, Art Expert, Wickthorpe Castle, Bucks, England.” He tore it open and read: 

"“Dear Sir: After considerable search I have located what I believe is a really desirable example of Meissonier. It is a large work, and rather expensive, but within the limit that you set. According to your instructions I have secured a ten-day option on it. I hope this letter finds you safe and well. Not being sure where you are I am sending a copy in care of your mother on the Cap d’Antibes, and one in care of your father in care of the Budd-Erling Aircraft Corporation in Connecticut. Respectfully, Brun.” 

"So there it was. Lanny lost not an hour, but packed a couple of bags and took the first train to London. On the way he thought over his plan of campaign. He had paper and envelopes, purchased in advance. Since it was after business hours, he couldn’t stop in a typewriter shop as he had done in Paris; but the hotel porter would manage to find him a machine. In writing to strangers he dared not use his own, which he left in hotel rooms, where anyone might take a sample of its writing. He imagined the Gestapo being on his trail and having such a sample in its files. If one of his letters of warning fell into their hands, they could make a comparison under the microscope and establish his responsibility. 

"First he wrote his report to F.D.R.: “The German army will invade France by way of Belgium and Holland, starting about the 10th of May. This information comes from the same source as that previously sent, which proved correct. I have every reason to trust it.” That was all; it wasn’t his part to make appeals, or even suggestions. The President of the United States would know what use he wished to make of such information. 

"Then Lanny wrote three letters, much the same as he had written to the Norwegian ambassador in Paris; these to the Belgian, Dutch, and French ambassadors in London. Also a note to Rick, saying: “The date of the appointment is May 10th. Positive.” Rick had agreed that when he got this word, he would put his father to work a second time. It hadn’t done much good in the former case, but it might do more now, because the baronet could say: “Didn’t I tell you about Norway?” 

"Lanny groped his way through the blackout, and dropped the letters into different postboxes on the street—all but the one for the Honorable Joseph P. Kennedy. For all Lanny could tell, there might be a diplomatic pouch leaving that night, and no chance must be missed. He stepped into a taxi and said: “American Embassy.” By some paranormal sense which the taximen had developed in the past eight months, this one managed to draw up in front of the stately building. Lanny gave him the letter, saying: “Be so good as to hand this in, and say: ‘Personal for Mr. Kennedy.’” With the request went a half-crown, and the driver replied: “Righto, guv’ner.” 

"Lanny followed him part way to the door, near enough to see but not to be seen. Afterwards he let the man deliver him to a point near the hotel, but not at it. All this seemed to him to constitute the perfect crime, and he settled himself comfortably in bed to read the latest painful details from the fishing villages of Namsos and Andalsnes. “Too little and too late”—once more!"
...............................................................................


Lanny decided to stay in London as he contemplated the horror expected. The beautiful little homes and gardens of the small countries reduced to rubble, and the free people subjected to Nazi lies. 

"The Jews would be robbed and driven into exile; the labor unions and the co-operatives would be destroyed and the newspapers suppressed, or made over in the Nazi mold; the children would be turned over to Nazi teachers and made into hateful little robots; the government would be put into the hands of those semi-lunatics in each country who espoused the Nazi cause, and who put on colored shirts with swastikas on them and went about heiling one another and denouncing the pluto-democratic-Jewish-Bolshevik institutions of their own land. Already you saw the whole thing in operation in Norway, where there was a creature by the name of Quisling who had the whole works and had been suddenly boosted into the seat of authority. There was something about his name which exercised a fascination upon the English mind, and it was becoming a symbol for everything horrid: a name, as the Times put it, “Suggestive of the questionable, the querulous, the quavering of quaking quagmires and quivering quicksands, of quibbles and quarrels, of queasiness, quackery, qualms and quilp.”"

As for the appeasers, 

"There was something going on, a negotiation so ultra-secret that Lanny was allowed only a hint of it; but there was a hitch, somebody had raised his demands, and, as usual, each side blamed the other, each suspected that the other had been playing for time, pretending good faith while having only guile."

The evening after Chamberlain's speech in parliament Wickthorpe called Lanny from the apartment they kept in town where he was with Irma, and asked if Lanny knew Comtesse de Portes. He needed Lanny to go to Paris and take a letter to her. 

"If the Quai d’Orsay would make even the smallest public move toward peace, we could say that we were forced to join them. Even our madmen wouldn’t want to fight Hitler alone.” 

"So there was the P.A., in the very heart and center of the intrigue about which he had been hearing whispers for the past few weeks. It was too late from the point of view of a P.A., but he didn’t say so; he listened patiently to the outline of an elaborate set of proposals for the reconstruction of Europe: a nominally independent Poland, under an administration satisfactory to the Nazis, and with the right of trade through a Corridor to be acknowledged as German; the independence of Norway and Denmark to be restored, but with German control of the waters leading to the Baltic; an agreement as to submarine and air-power ratios: in short, another Munich, but very much worse from the British point of view."

Lanny wrote a report to Washington, and flew next morning to Paris, and met Comtesse de Portes to give the letter. She blamed the British for not acting first. 

"Monsieur Budd had come from London to see her, and she appreciated this, and hinted to him about one last effort that was being made, this time by way of Brussels. ... He went back to his hotel and dutifully wrote another report, saying: 

"“I fear this will be out-of-date before it reaches you. The appeasers are making a last appeal through the King of the Belgians, who is afraid of losing his throne if real war breaks out. All the monarchs of the small countries have the same fear, but they dare not stand together. Now King Leopold is awaiting Hitler’s reply, and it is a question whether this will be delivered by Ribbentrop or by the Wehrmacht.”"

Lanny telegraphed his mother and got his mail, including one from Raoul Palma in code. They met with precautions. 

"The “Inferno,” it appeared, was one of the concentration camps in the southwest of France, where a heartless government kept tens of thousands of refugees who had fled from Franco’s hangmen and torturers. More than a year had passed since the collapse of the Spanish Republican government, but still the French politicians refused to turn any foreign “Reds” loose in France. They were not to be moved by the fact that these internees were the most determined foes of Nazism on the Continent, thousands of them soldiers with battle experience who craved nothing in the world but to go to the front and fight the Hitlerites. But no, they were “politically untrustworthy,” and even Frenchmen who had fought for the liberties of Spain were denied posts of responsibility in the fight for the life of la patrie."

Lanny told him of the impending attack and asked him to tell the French newspapers claiming it was from German underground. He went back and met people of his usual circle, and Madame de Portes. She entrusted Lanny with an errand, to visit Brussels and convey a message, and bring the reply back in his head. He accepted, even when she let it slip that hostilities may be imminent, which he'd never admitted to knowing to anyone excrept his secret friends, saying that Emil Meissner, his friend from childhood, was posted on the belgian front, so it would be social occasion if hostilities did break.  

"This interview took place on the evening of the 9th of May, and his plane was to fly from Le Bourget field at ten the next morning, and put him down in Brussels in time for lunch with His Majesty’s man. When he returned to the Crillon, Der Tag was less than two hours away—that is, if Monck’s information was correct, and if Professor Pröfenik, or the little old lady on the Nymphenburgerstrasse with the much-worn deck of black cards, had not caused Adi Schicklgruber to change his mind.

"Now the Dutch army had canceled all leaves; and Lanny wondered, had his warnings had anything to do with that?"

He was listening to the radio, and dropped off. 

"The attack, if it was coming, would be at dawn, which comes early at this season in the high altitudes of Europe.

"The watcher dropped off to sleep with his bedside light still burning; and when he opened his eyes again he did not know how long he had slept. A glance at the window, and he realized that it was dawn. He reached for the radio and turned to one of the Paris stations. An excited voice was shouting, and it took Lanny a few moments to realize what he was hearing: bombings all over Holland, Belgium, and Northern France; German planes attacking one airfield after another, and rumors of parachute troops landing here and there. Suddenly the sirens of Paris began screaming, and at once the radio went dead."

Lanny dresses and went with others to the air raid shelter, but it was false alarm, and he returned when all clear sounded, and listened to the radio which was back on. The places mentioned were all personal memories.  

"The Germans had repeated all the tricks they had used in Poland and Norway, and perfected in the interim. The first attack was upon the airfields of the three nations, in order to destroy their planes on the ground, or make it impossible for them to get into the air. Freight vessels had arrived in Rotterdam and Antwerp, supposedly loaded with merchandise, but really with troops which came out at the appointed hour to seize the arsenals and other strategic places. Paratroopers descended from the skies, and traveling salesmen and tourists emerged from the hotels to show them the way. The great Moerdijk bridge, which crosses the estuary of the Waal and the Rhine rivers, was seized before it could be destroyed; and so on for one place after another. Reports came in fragmentary form, but one who knew how to put them together discovered a pattern—it was like those wasps which prey upon grubs, and which have learned where each separate ganglion lies, and put their stingers in at the precise spot."

Lanny went back to attending business at hand by getting through breakfast and dressing, attending to his father's needs from him of meeting people about the new plant, beginning with the De Bruyne family. He met Denis at lunch. 

"Incidentally the younger man got an item of information which interested him greatly; the United States army and navy were turning back airplanes to Budd-Erling, and Johannes Robin was selling them to the French and British purchasing commissions in New York! The army and navy were getting the promise of much better planes than they turned in, so no ardent patriot could find fault with the arrangement; meantime the existing planes were being loaded onto French and British vessels in American ports, taking the chances of a race through submarine-infested waters. The arrangement was being kept secret, so much so that Robbie had written his son nothing about it; Denis had got the news from the French authorities.

"Meantime the news was pouring in, and growing more and more frightful. The Germans were swarming all over Holland, and it was evident that the carefully prepared defenses of that little country were not counting for much. The main attack was centered at the southernmost tip, where Belgium and Holland and Germany meet; the defenses of two small countries had not been co-ordinated, since that might have been a violation of “neutrality.” Now the Nazis didn’t have to be neutral, so they rushed their tanks through Maastricht, and their spies and saboteurs and Dutch traitors held the bridges, or held the banks while the engineers built new bridges over the innumerable canals and streams of the Lowlands. 

"Everything was taken in a rush, because lives meant nothing to Adolf Hitler—not even German lives. Before he came to join his troops he made one of his grandiose speeches declaring: “The fight beginning today decides the fate of the German nation for the next thousand years.” He had been getting the nation ready for more than seven years, and had been getting his own youth ready for almost a score. Now he had aroused in them the necessary spirit of “fanaticism”—his favorite word, which he rarely left out of a speech. It took them only five days to sweep over Holland and force its army to surrender and its Queen and government to flee. Just to teach the Dutch the proper fear of Nazi “fanaticism,” the bombers came in broad daylight over defenseless Rotterdam and destroyed twenty-six thousand buildings, killing twenty thousand people. 

"Meantime the armies were on the way through Belgium. The Albert Canal was supposed to be the country’s principal defense; it had concrete walls thirty feet high, and was supposed to make a perfect tank trap; but the Belgians had postponed blowing up the bridges, and the spies and paratroopers got there first. In the few cases where a bridge was blown, the Nazi engineers at once appeared with a sectional bridge to fit that spot. Fort Eben-Emael, supposed to be impregnable, was taken in a few hours by a combination of dive-bombers, smokescreens, flamethrowers, and grenadiers. Leopold, King of the Belgians, who had refused Allied help in advance, now called for it loudly, and became angry when it did not arrive in sufficient force. He had lived surrounded by “Rexists,” the Fascists of his country, and now he first got the Allied armies into his country, and then surrendered his own armies and left his allies cut off.

"The Germans had five thousand tanks; and, by an odd quirk of fate, the best of them, with the deadliest fire-power, had come from Czechoslovakia—that magnificent Skoda plant which Baron Schneider had owned and which the Nazis had so rudely wrested from him. What a blow to the men of Munich, what a mockery of their dreams! They might have had those tanks on their own side; they might have had the excellent Czech army, and the Polish army, and, with a little wisdom and good faith, the Russian army; but instead, the tanks came crashing through the Ardennes forest and broke the line which the French had extended there. Only five days after the start of the offensive they crossed the river Meuse and took Sedan; Lanny remembered the steep wooded sides of that valley, thickly studded with pillboxes, and he wondered, where was the French army and what was it doing? In the drawing-rooms of Paris, ladies and gentlemen looked at each other, dazed by this news, and saying: “Our real forces have not gone into action yet.” They tried to comfort themselves: “Gamelin is holding back; he is waiting to strike them on the flank; he is leading them into a trap from which they will not escape.” 

"But the insiders, those who were close to the government, were not fooling themselves; they knew by the end of the first week that the Nazis had created a weapon that neither the French nor the British could stand up against. The breakthrough on the Meuse was widened to more than a hundred miles, and there were tank battles on the plains beyond the river. The only question was, which way would the Germans head—straight west toward Paris, or north to outflank the British army, or south to take the Maginot Line from the rear, a possibility which had not been considered when that one-hundred-thousand-million-franc monstrosity was constructed. The Germans did not delay to let them know; in one day they drove to the river Somme, and turned north up that valley, all the way to the Channel, penetrating like a scythe and ready like a scythe to cut down everything within the sweep of its blade."

Lanny met an old acquaintance from League days, a journalist, whom normally now he'd have avoided, but now had a talk with in a cafe, and Knick commented on the expert reporting that German forces were in a dangerous position of overextending and risking being cut off by British and French. 

"“What he says would be perfectly correct,” declared Knick, “if only the French wanted to fight; but they don’t.” 

"“How do you explain it?” inquired the P.A. 

"“There’s only one explanation possible—that is, treason at the top. The heads of the French army are Nazis at heart, and don’t want to fight their best friends.” 

"“That sounds like motion-picture stuff, Knick,” said Lanny. 

"“Call it what you please,” replied the other. “It’s what a lot of us Americans have decided is the truth. How can you have lived all these years in France and not realized how the German and Italian and Spanish agents have been working here, and the billions of francs they have been pouring out? Now they are cashing in.” 

"“Well, you know,” explained Lanny, “I’m an art expert, and I’ve been hunting old masters and not paying much attention to political talk. But I agree with you that the facts ought to be told somehow.” 

"“We’re going to find a way to outwit the damned censors, and it won’t be long, believe you me!” exclaimed the red-headed and hotheaded correspondent."

Lanny visited Chateau de Bruyne for the weekend, and found the family divided. Denis fils was wounded and being cared for by Annette, and his time in the army had changed him.

"Eight and a half months at the front had sufficed to make the son into a patriot, convinced that his country had been tricked into inaction, and that the Nazis meant to conquer it completely, take away its industries, and set it to growing wheat and wine and fruit for German tables. He was lying helpless, unable to lift a newspaper or turn a radio dial, but chafing like a caged animal, eager to get back into the fight. He could hardly bring himself to believe the news he heard, and the tears ran down his cheeks as Lanny assured him that the worst was true, the Germans had taken Abbeville at the mouth of the Somme, and cut off the British army and a large section of the French, including Denis’s own division. Now the British were making a desperate stand in Calais, but how they could escape was impossible to imagine. 

"Lanny sat with his hand resting on the younger man’s knee and let his tears flow. This was Marie’s son, and Lanny had known him since he was a lad in short trousers, and had shared his confidences, and of late years managed to avoid argument, no matter how far apart they drifted. Now he listened to Denis’s story, and answered his questions. Yes, it was terrible, incredible; Lanny had been staggered, like everybody else. The German armor had been stronger and their airplanes far more numerous. Denis cried out that it wasn’t only that, it was the French spirit that had failed; not the common soldier, who was still the brave garçon he had always been, but the men at the top, les sales politiciens, quarreling among themselves—— 

"“France is a free country,” put in the older man. “There must be disagreement in a republic.” 

"“Yes, but we have abused our freedom. In the face of such a foe, it was our necessity to come to an understanding, and to protect our heritage. We could have had just as good tanks, just as good planes as the Germans.” 

"“You know I did what little I could on that score, Denis.” 

"“Where were our planes while we were fighting? I pledge you my word I never saw one, not one the whole time. But the Germans were over us all day, like a swarm of bees, diving down with screaming noises, that were supposed to frighten us worse than the bullets—and they did, with some. Mon dieu, c’était affreux!”

All this was upstairs, while below Lanny was introduced to Laval whom he knew from Riviera, and who was discussing how Paris could be saved from the fate suffered by Rotterdam. 

"“First we have to make peace, Monsieur Laval. I hope that you are using your immense political influence to that end.”

"After that there was no reason for a statesman to hesitate. He explained that it had been the dream of his life to bring about a Mediterranean Federation, to include France, Italy and Spain; in such a group France, with her greater wealth, population and culture, would inevitably have become the leader. But this aim had been thwarted, and now it was necessary to recognize the fact that Germany had won the leadership, and was going to establish the new European order. To resist further would be suicide; it was obvious that the greater the expense to which Germany was put, the greater the reparations which France would be expected to pay.

"“It should be obvious to any thinking man that once we have made friends with Germany, she no longer has any interest in hurting us; Russia is her true foe, and ours, and only camouflaged sedition could keep us from recognizing that. Now we shall have to submit to humiliation for a time, but once we convince the Germans of our good faith we can become full partners in the New Order. All that Hitler is trying to do is to put the right men in control of France.”

"Who these right men were could be a matter of no uncertainty to Pierre Laval. Unquestionably the man to become President of the new government was Marshal Pétain, who had abandoned his Spanish mission and was awaiting the new call to serve his country."
...............................................................................


The descriptions of destruction of cities, towns and generally civilian populations by German onslaught seem, not due merely to the scope but much more so due to the intentional and deliberate nature of it, and of the aim to subdue via terror, almost a copy of the tactics of Mongols, especially Chingis Khan, sweeping through Asia and Russia to border of Central Europe, and if this copy were deliberate it's hardly surprising, but if not, it takes a more menacing but real aspect. 
...............................................................................


"Two weeks and two days after the start of the Blitzkrieg, Lanny heard over the radio that Calais had been taken, and heard the Germans claim that they had a million French and British troops pinned against the Channel coast."

Lanny received an urgent message from Comtesse de Portes to call, and while he waited, General Maréchal entered. 

" ... he had enjoyed about every honor a French soldier could win—Generalissimo, Inspector-General of the Armies, Chef de la Defense du Territoire, Inspector-General of Aviation, Vice-President of the Supreme War Council, Minister of War, Permanent Member of the Inner War Council, and, since the last ten days, Vice-Premier of France."

Lanny stood up for the old soldier, and reminded him that they had met in Madrid. Maréchal expressed hope that the Budd concern would send the planes France needed. He had changed from his position of planes being of little use. 

"Said Marshal Pétain: “I have been assured by several authorities that the Führer is prepared to guarantee without qualification the integrity of Britain and the British Empire.” 

“He has told me that himself,” agreed Lanny. 

"“Then you will do this for us?” inquired the Comtesse, eagerly. 

"“I will go, madame, and will do my best; but do not ask me to promise to succeed. You must bear in mind that Winston Churchill is now Prime Minister and he is an extremely arrogant man. I have had opportunities to talk with him and I know.”"

Lanny was flown to England and driven to Wickthorpe, where Ceddy and Irma hurried to meet him. He found them bewildered and confounded, and they wondered what madness it was British not surrendering. But any such measures as Lanny had brought the message of, they said, it was too late. 
...............................................................................


"Nine Panzer divisions, each with four hundred tanks and self-propelled guns, had driven through to the Channel, completely cutting off a million French and British troops from connection with the rest of France. The vast might of the Wehrmacht was closing in from the east and south, and crowding the victims into a small pocket against the coast at Dunkirk. The British rearguards were holding desperately, forcing a house-to-house battle at Calais and other places; but they were being steadily driven back, and surrender of the whole force seemed inevitable. A call was going out for the British to organize for home defense; every able-bodied man and boy must prepare to fight with whatever weapons he could lay hands on."

Lanny met Rick as before. 

"Rick confirmed Ceddy’s story of this small island’s plight. Everything had been sent across to help the French: trained men, guns, ammunition, every sort of equipment; a couple of thousand field guns, nearly a thousand tanks, fifty thousand vehicles! Britain was left naked to her enemy, and the enemy was bound to know it. “We won’t even have a chance to destroy anything, Lanny; the Nazis will use it against us.”"

Preparations were on, road signs taken off, roads blocked, and wardens watching out. Lanny listened to the radio, but not a word about how the stranded army was to be brought home. Whatever was being done, enemy shouldn't be told. A call came for Lanny, saying, no names, and asking if he wanted to come along. Lanny thought, and accepted. He was given directions and went with a small bundle after leaving his suitcase at the hotel, and waited at Charing Cross Pier. 

"Lanny noticed a peculiar phenomenon—nearly all the traffic was one way. Everything from tiny speedboats to river tugs with as many as fifteen or twenty cabin launches in tow, all gliding silently in the general direction of the morning sun. It was as if they had been seized by what the learned scientists call a phototropism, an impulse to move toward the light."

Rick's motorboat, borrowed from a neighbour, fifteen feet. Lanny was to steer. 

"Two weeks ago the Admiralty had foreseen the possibility of trouble, and on the day before Holland gave up, the BBC had broadcast an order for all owners of motor craft of between thirty and a hundred feet length to register the same with the Small Vessels Pool. “That doesn’t include us; we’re just minnows—but I’m told they’ll let us go. I saw a couple of chaps setting out down river in canoes with outboard motors. Maybe they’ll put them aboard one of the larger vessels; they’ll be using washtubs over there, no doubt.”

"All boats seemed to be concentrating at the pier, so they joined the immense flock—literally more than either of them had ever seen in one place, and certainly more kinds than they had known existed in the ports of Britain. There were coasters and fisherboats, drifters and tugs, speedboats and yachts, minesweepers, trawlers, and the fast new vessels called “sloops”; there were whalers, pilot cutters, target-towing boats; there was a ferry vessel which had taken railroad cars across the Thames, and which was now going to sea for the first time in its long career; there were fireboats and lifeboats—some old ones from ships which had been sunk years ago; there were ancient paddle steamers, the Brighton Belle and the Brighton Queen, converted to minesweepers; there were mud-scows with fancy names such as Galleon’s Reach and Queen’s Channel. The inhabitants of this little island had been a sea people since the earliest days recorded, and had built every sort of craft for every purpose; now, seized by the tropism called patriotism, they had come put-putting out from their coves and inlets, ready to do what had never needed to be done in all those previous centuries. 

"Some just went on their own, without any word or assistance. But Eric Vivian Pomeroy-Nielson, former army flyer, was a man of discipline; he reported to a naval patrol, and was ordered to a place at the pier where boats were being checked and supplies handed out freely: parcels of food, first-aid kits, fresh water, fuel for the engines. Only one question: “Will you go to Dunkirk?” Each man must be fitted with a steel helmet and a gas mask—this set two amateur sailors to thinking about the seriousness of their venture.

"There was a breeze springing up, and when they came round into the Strait of Dover there was a bit of a sea ... From that time on they were under naval orders; in fact, they had a regular Admiral—and assuredly no Admiral of the King’s Navee had ever commanded a more fantastic armada. The high personage—his name was Taylor—dashed about in a motor launch some thirty feet long, with twin engines and mounting two Bren guns; for a crew he had one sub-lieutenant, one stoker, and one gunner; but his flag gave him authority, and all his “small vessels” did what he told them. They were to wait until just before dawn and go in convoy; meantime their supplies would be checked again—they must have petrol for several days’ work at the beaches, and they must have enough food and plenty of fresh water. The navy was in a generous mood; they got real butter and live eggs, which had already become a rarity in London. They were advised to tie up and sleep for a while, and to keep their “tin hats” handy. A patrol ship passed out buckets of hot tea, priceless to Englishmen. 

"There wasn’t much order to the procession which set out in the early morning hours. No two vessels had the same speed, and the fast ones were not required to wait for the slow; they were soon spread out over the forty miles between Ramsgate and Dunkirk. Nobody had difficulty in finding the way, even in darkness, because there was a red glare in the sky, and when you got nearer you could see flames and pillars of thick black smoke. When dawn came, the convoy was scattered all over the sea in front and behind; they had been joined by red-sailed French fishing boats from as far as Caen and Le Havre, boats with pious names such as Ave Maria and Gratia Plena, Stella Maris and Ciel de France; also escaped Dutch and Belgian vessels, stout and stubby, called schouts.

"Little boats were not going into the harbor; little boats could approach the beaches, where the water was shallow, and men could wade out, in some places a quarter of a mile before they were up to their necks. The orders to the Gar had been brief: “Go wherever there are men on the shore, and bring them out to the nearest larger boat.” ... they brought the wounded and got them in first. Whatever number the oarsmen specified, that number was put in, and the boat was turned and rowed out to the tug. When the tug was loaded, it took the load out to one of the steamers and then came back for more.

"Toward evening a hospital ship, white-painted and with conspicuous red crosses, was dive-bombed and got a great hole in her side; many of the wounded had life jackets put on them and were dropped into the sea. The Admiral’s launch came along and ordered both the Gar and the Gentle Annie to the rescue, and that was a job that took several hours. Lifting wounded men out of the water couldn’t be done quite so unceremoniously; and presently it was dark, and there couldn’t be any lights, not even a cigarette, because that would bring the bombers again. You had to creep here and there at a speed of a mile or two per hour, calling, and trying to hear the responses of men and women in the water. Lanny had to be prepared to give a whirl to the wheel if he saw any phosphorescence which might mean the presence of a swimmer; Rick had to be on the qui vive to stop or to reverse the engine, for the sea was blowing up again, and if you heard a cry it might be a man’s last. They had two husky chaps with them to do the lifting; and because the victims were half dead with cold they had to make frequent trips to the tug.

"The time came when they themselves were utterly exhausted, drenched with spray and half frozen by the north wind, and Rick seasick again. They had to turn the launch over to others and seek shelter in the Gentle Annie’s bosom. Rick was lifted on board—he really had no right to be doing this work, with his game leg, and everybody treated him with special care, even while hiding the fact to save his pride. Because he couldn’t bend one knee it was slow work getting up or down a companionway; as a rule he did it with one leg and two arms to let himself down a step at a time; but now, for the first time since Lanny knew him, he had to admit that he was at the end of his strength and let himself be carried, pick-a-back. 

"Have you ever been inside the boiler room of a tug—one of those soft-coal-burning tramps that fills the air with thick black smoke which in the course of nearly a century has made the London docks and the London dockers as grimy as itself? Ordinarily you wouldn’t think of one of these tugs as especially lovable, but when your very bones are frozen and your teeth are chattering and you are dazed with exhaustion, you are taken into a room where the heat clasps you like a mother’s arms and penetrates to the very center of your being; nor does it fail, but is renewed every few minutes by the opening of an iron door and an outpouring from a golden-hot furnace. You sink to the floor and don’t care how black it is, because it is warm. You strip off your wet clothes and lay them over the boiler and in five minutes they are dry again.

"There were officially said to be eight hundred and eighty-five vessels taking part in the rescue, but that didn’t include the many which went in on their own and didn’t come back to report. The British and French navies admitted the loss of thirteen destroyers and twenty-four minor war vessels. ... But more ships kept coming, and the R.A.F. kept clearing the skies—they were getting four Jerries to one, the navy men reported, and Rick announced, proudly: “I’ve a son up there.” To Lanny he said, no less proudly: “I told you so! We’re better!”

"From first to last, Lanny didn’t see a single man, rescued or rescuers, flinch from a duty; he heard tales of Frenchmen rushing the boats, but the ones he helped invariably shook hands with him and said “Merci, monsieu’.” When they discovered that he knew their language, they told him something of their adventures; and Rick, a professional in spite of weariness and seasickness, would say: “Somebody will get a great story out of this!” Lanny met Americans who had been driving ambulances, and what the British called “tea cars” for the Y.M.C.A. He met a British officer who had galloped onto the beach on a stolen French carthorse, and another who had ridden a lady’s bicycle and didn’t say how he had got it. The Tommies had many such tales to tell and were glad of a chance to laugh. They had much fun with French peasant boys who had never seen the sea, and were as much afraid of a small boat as of a German tank. 

"The docks of the city were blasted and the warehouses burning, and the waterfront became too hot for men or ships; so more and more men appeared on the beaches, and on the jetties which protected the roadstead. The largest of these was made by driving piles into the sand, two parallel rows close together. Nobody had ever contemplated using them as a pier; but some bright fellow had the idea of the mess tables of the vessels, and they were brought out and laid upside down on the pilings, making a gangway of a sort. Over that precarious footing something like a half million British and French boots passed in the course of several days and nights. The ships drew up alongside and the men stepped aboard, and that was a lot faster than wading into the surf. The Germans bombed that jetty incessantly, but they never once hit it; the Spitfires came in droves and sent many of the bombers plunging into the sea. The destroyers and the ack-ack guns on the beach kept up an incessant pounding at them. Also the cruisers, which had enormous eight-barreled anti-aircraft guns, known as “Chicago pianos.” There was such a racket that you had to shout to be heard. 

"Rick contributed another bright idea to this haphazard procedure. The wide beach was sprinkled with vehicles of every sort, ambulances, tanks, lorries which had been driven here and could go no further. Why not drive them into the sea, as far as they would go—two of them side by side and then another pair, and another, until you had a pier of a sort. With planks laid on top, men would walk to the end and boats of medium size could come and get them handily. Rick shouted the suggestion to a young lieutenant, who put men to work; and in an hour or so it was done, and things went much faster at that spot. The enemy had a new target, but his shooting wasn’t any too good, and presently a new flock of destroyers would sweep in and put his guns out of action."

"One of the regular Channel steamers made eight round trips to Ramsgate, with some two thousand men at each trip.

"Until at last there were no more except the rearguards, and the navy was going to care for them. “Gentlemen, your work is done,” said the Admiral, darting here and there on his tiny flagship. “You can go home whenever you please. Be sure you have enough petrol, and if you want a tow, come to one of the assembling stations.”

Lanny and Rick were done with the rescue, and Rick was exhausted. Lanny told him he planned to leave and join the German army, to find out information. He thought he'd be all right, since Emil Meissner was in charge there. They took leave. 

"How many do you suppose have been saved?” 

“God knows! I’d guess half a million.” When the figures were announced, the world learnt that this civilian effort had saved a total of 122,000 Frenchmen, and just twice as many Britons."
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Lanny found an empty apartment that served his purpose of making himself presentable, resting, and then he walked out and asked the soldiers where he could find the command. He was taken to an officer who sent up his details after checking, and he read Kölnische Zeitung, the newspaper from Cologne, while waiting. 

"read the High Command’s summary of the battle of Flanders, just completed by the taking of Dunkirk. It was “the greatest battle of destruction of all time.” With total casualties of about sixty thousand the Germans had taken one million, two hundred thousand prisoners, including Belgians and Dutch. A considerable navy had been destroyed, including five cruisers sunk and ten damaged. Lanny hadn’t seen any cruiser sunk and he decided right there that the Nazis had taken charge of the Wehrmacht’s publicity department. 

"There was all the customary hate-stuff, including exultation over the first bombing of Paris which had taken place a couple of days previously. Italy was on the point of entering the war, mobs in Milan and Rome were clamoring for it, and Göring and Hess had gone there to arrange co-operation. Also, according to the Nazis, the British were planning to torpedo the American liners which were taking Americans home, and then blame the act on the Germans. Since it was obvious that the Germans couldn’t know this if it were true, Lanny wondered if they were preparing to torpedo the liners themselves and blame it on the British. They had already done that in the case of the Athenia, at the very outbreak of the war, when twenty-five Americans had lost their lives."

Message came to send Lanny with the staff car. "“Ein grosses Vergnügen, Herr Budd. Sie fahren sofort nach des Führers Feldquartier.”"

"German planes hovered in the sky; but nowhere on this trip did Lanny catch sight of a French or British plane, or of any air fighting.

"All the roads leading west were filled with traffic bound for the front; a seemingly endless procession of guns, half-tracks, field kitchens and supply trucks. Great six-inch guns hauled by caterpillar tractors going forty miles an hour, and followed by trucks loaded with shells, and crews to serve them, and men with machine guns and light mortars to defend them—all rushing into France, appearing suddenly where nobody expected them, and firing under the direction of spotting planes! Lanny doubted very much if the French had provided anything like that, and the French were all alone now! He had read in the Kölnische Zeitung that General Weygand had been put in command of the grande armée, and the line they had set up along the Somme was called the Weygand line. Lanny recalled this dapper, wizened old gentleman whom he had met socially; he was one of the most ardent appeasers, and only three years ago the Cagoulards had chosen him as one of a committee of five who were to govern their counter-revolutionary France."

Lanny was taken to field headquarters of the conqueror leader and met him, telling him he had messages that were now out of date, sent from Comtesse De Portes. He was told there was no intention of harming Paris. 

"Messengers came with despatches. The mechanized forces under General von Reichenau had broken across the Somme at Amiens. Guderian and Kleist were heading for Soissons. Hitler read these reports to his guest and compared the swift advances to the long siege of fighting over these same places in World War I."

Hitler hated England for not accepting defeat. 

"Churchill had made a report on Dunkirk to the House of Commons on the previous day, and the BBC had been broadcasting the text ever since. Hitler had had a recording made, and a translation for his own use. He told Lanny about it with a mixture of ridicule and rage: a lot of dummes Zeug about “fighting on beaches, landing grounds, in fields, in streets and on the hills.” Said the Führer: “What will they fight with? Don’t they know they have left all their equipment behind in Flanders? And don’t they know that I know it?”"

Lanny explained the British mindset. 

"The British had been sailors, mostly in small ships, and each captain was a law unto himself, and that was the basis of their individualism. Also, the fact that there was a wide and rough Channel between them and Europe gave them a feeling of security."

Hitler said they were ridiculous. 

"“I will wipe out London, I will wipe out Birmingham and Sheffield and all their manufacturing cities. They challenge me, and make it impossible for me to spare them. I am getting barges ready, and transports, and will put an army on their coasts as soon as I finish with France.  ... “Everybody was sure it would be costly to breach the Maginot Line; but we breached it at almost no cost, and so we have plenty of expendables for the taking of Britain. I will show my generals how to save many lives—by putting down paratroopers who will paralyze all the brain centers of the island before the invasion starts. ... Tell them they may have exactly this much time—what it takes me to resupply my armies and move them to the Channel ports. That much, and not one hour more, Herr Budd!”””

Lanny had heard what he came to find out. He took his leave, having asked where Kurt was, and went to visit him in Godesberg on Rhine. Having talked, heard his new march and walked around in the forests, Lanny said he'd like to go to Basel where he might find a painting he could buy for adi as a gift, and Kurt liked the idea.

"So Lanny enjoyed a daylight rail trip up the storied Rhine. In the wealthy and pious Swiss city with the ancient cathedral he got himself a hotel room and a typewriter, and wrote:

"“The Germans expect to take Paris within one week from date. Pétain will be the head of the new French government and Otto Abetz will be Governor of Paris. The present program is to attack England by means of bombers, parachutists, barges and transports, as soon as the armies can be moved to the Channel ports and resupplied. In the meantime appeasement negotiations are going on with British agents in Madrid and Stockholm. German demands are for the Cameroons, German East Africa, and the Belgian Congo, a free hand for themselves in Eastern Europe, and for Mussolini in dealing with Spain, Yugoslavia and Greece. This comes from the highest authority and is to be accepted.”

"This he double-sealed in the usual way, and addressed it, not to the American ambassador as such, but to Leland Harrison, Esq., 4 West-strasse, Bern. Lanny knew that Basel would be swarming with German agents, and that anyone coming from that country would be closely watched; so he took a long walk and turned many corners before at last he dropped the letter into an inconspicuous box. After that he went straightway to look up art dealers, and made himself as prominent as possible, inspecting what they had to offer, and inquiring as to what there was to be seen in private collections, and whether any of them could be purchased for American collectors. He spoke German, and looked at German paintings, and made quite sure that the Germans would know he was there.

"He had the good fortune to come upon a Defregger, one fairly small, which could be taken out of its frame and carried under a gentleman’s arm in wartime. This Austrian painter was the Führer’s favorite; he would delight to look upon the weatherbeaten countenance of an old Bauer of the Innthal; ... Adi would find in those wrinkled features the honesty, fidelity and credulity which were the virtues he wanted in his peasants, and meant to teach to all the peasants of the earth, not excluding North America. He would hang the work in his private car, and take it back to Berchtesgaden and put it in one of his guest bedrooms. The price was only fifteen hundred Swiss francs, which Lanny arranged to pay through his bank in Cannes. When he took possession of the work he did not fail to say what he was going to do with it. He knew that the story would go all over town, and certainly ought to satisfy the agents of the Gestapo!"

"Back to the Mountain of the Gods. Kurt admired the painting, and listened while Lanny explained the peculiarities of the painter’s technique, and its derivations. They played four-hand piano compositions which Lanny had purchased; and in between times they listened to the radio and marveled at the achievements of the Führer’s armies. Nothing like it in the world! They had broken through along the coast, and by the 10th of June were at Dieppe, and from there in a great bulge through Compiègne and Soissons. In two days more they were at Le Havre, and all the way along the Seine, as close to Paris as the mouth of the Oise. They had begun a giant new offensive farther west, and had broken through to the west of Paris and reached the Marne. They had taken Château-Thierry—name full of significance to Americans as well as French.

"It was incredible. Kurt was like a man walking on air, or flying on one of the steeds of his Valkyries. He hummed new music, and started to write a march that would be better than his first.

"Mussolini summoned his Fascist mob to the plaza in front of the Palazzo Venezia. The band struck up and he made his dramatic appearance on the balcony, thrust out his pouter-pigeon chest, and roared one of those pompous pronouncements which had caused Rick to call him the world’s most odious man. “Fighters of land, sea and air, Black-shirts of the revolution and of the legions, men and women of Italy, and of the empire, and of the Kingdom of Albania, listen! The hour destined by fate is sounding for us. The hour of irrevocable decision has come. A declaration of war has already been handed to the ambassadors of Great Britain and France. We take the field against the plutocratic and reactionary democracies which always have blocked the march and frequently plotted against the existence of the Italian people.…”

"And so on, through a long tirade, which the Nazi press featured on their front pages. Lanny was concerned, because one of the Duce’s demands was for Nice, and that might include Cannes and the Cap d’Antibes, Bienvenu and Beauty Budd. But Kurt said: “Do not worry. The jackal only takes what the lion allows him.” Such was a Nazi agent’s opinion of his ally. He went on to predict that Mussolini would do no invading or fighting in France; he was afraid of the French army, even crippled as it was, and still more afraid of the British Mediterranean fleet. It was understood that he was to be in on the armistice, and to have French North Africa if he could take it."

Kurt asked what Lanny planned next. He was going to work in Paris, and Lanny offered to help.

"“Herrlich!” exclaimed Kurt. “Perhaps we can devise a way for you to get to England now and then. We must set to work immediately to try to keep that war from going to extremes. Your connection with Irma and Ceddy may be most fortunate for us.”"
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Kurt was called to play his march when Germans entered Paris, and offered to take Lanny along in the limousine he was provided. 

"You got an overwhelming impression of destruction, because, in this new Panzer war, most of the fighting was along the roads, and the ditches were filled with wrecks of every sort. The dead humans had been buried where they lay, but the living still sat among the ruins. They had piled their belongings into carts or baby carriages, fleeing from bombs and shells; they had cumbered the highways, and had been one of the reasons why the French had been unable to move their armies. The Germans had cleared the roads ruthlessly; and now, after weeks of wandering, many of the people had given up in despair, and settled down to die of starvation where they lay. It was nobody’s business to feed them. 

"When the car traveled westward things were better, for there had been less fighting. The poilus had given up and taken the road home; if some Germans came along in an armored car and told them they were prisoners, eh, bien, they shrugged their shoulders and gave up. Altogether, Kurt reported, the Germans had taken close to a couple of million prisoners, with German casualties of all kinds less than a hundred thousand. Six nations conquered in nine weeks! There had been nothing like it in history."

They were close to Les Forêts and Lanny suggested they stop and look up Emily Chattersworth if she was there, but she had fled to Riviera and reichswehr occupied the place. Kurt said there would be no damage unlike the last time, and they'd compensate if any. 

"When the car neared Paris, Lanny said: “I want to retain my ability to help you and the Führer, and for that reason I ought not be seen riding in a German staff car. It might give the idea that I am in the pay of your government, and that would hurt my standing with some of the French.”"

So in a reversal of past, Kurt went on to Crillon while Lanny walked with his Defregger under his arm. There was plenty of hotel rooms. 

"More than half the population of Paris had fled to the south—they had been told that the Germans would plunder everything, shoot the men and rape the women. The result had been a frightful calamity; the roads had been blocked, and the Germans had bombed and machine-gunned them indiscriminately, killing tens of thousands of women and children. They still lay where they had fallen, and hundreds of thousands of refugees were sitting by the roadside, exhausted and despairing, with no place to go and no power to go there. This and other news you could get from radio stations in the south, if you could get access to a set; there was, as yet, no one to prevent your using it. 

"Lanny settled himself comfortably in the hotel where his mother had stayed at the time of the Peace Conference, and where she had hidden Kurt and helped him to escape into Spain. That had been a long time ago, and nobody remembered this elegant American gentleman who strolled in and engaged a suite. There was still food, if you had the price. To Lanny’s surprise he found that it was possible to get Bienvenu on the phone. He had a good chat with his mother; he didn’t say where he had been, but said Kurt was here, and thought she had nothing to worry about."

Beauty said there was a letter from Laurel, but Lanny said mail might not reach him now. Lanny visited Denis De Bruyne and was invited to stay. The elder son Denis fils had fled South to continue the fight. 

"Charlot had not been heard from; presumably he was a prisoner, as there had been no heavy fighting in or near the Swiss border. Lanny said: “I was in Basel a few days ago. Many thousands of French troops were crossing the border and giving themselves up for internment.”

"The French Premier had made a public appeal to President Roosevelt, to send “clouds of planes” to the rescue of France. The President had answered with a promise of every sort of material, but ended with the warning that he could not promise military aid, since only Congress had the power to declare war.

"Denis had received the assurance that the Germans were going to behave with the utmost correctness in Paris, and certainly their advance guards had done so. Very soon there would be nobody to challenge the New Order, and France would settle down to life without labor unions, riots, strikes, and all the other appurtenances of democracy."

June 16th was the entrance parade, and Lanny preferred to not go. 

"Apricot trees carefully trained against the south wall were loaded with half-grown fruit; roses were in bloom, and bees were busy, and Marie’s grandchildren knew nothing about old sorrows—it was the blessed renewal of nature. When Lanny tired of play, he could go in to the radio and hear about Winston Churchill’s proposal of a complete union of the British and the French peoples and governments. It had come rather late, and to an elderly French capitalist it seemed the apex of lunacy. “If we have to merge with some nation, why not the German? They are already here, and we don’t have to fight a bloody war and have our cities and homes destroyed in order to consummate the union.”

"Lanny went back to Paris, that strange, half-deserted city, with a curfew at nine o’clock and a blackout from sundown. The greater part of the shops were covered with iron shutters, and there was practically no traffic except military in the streets. ... Already they had taken over the radio stations, and had set up loudspeakers in the public squares, to tell the French what they were going to think for the next thousand years.

"Lanny put his wits to work on the problem of how to get to Bordeaux; it appeared to be his job to find out what the decision would be—surrender, or continuing the fight from Africa. Before he could hit upon a plan, he stopped in a crowd to listen to a loudspeaker on a street corner, and heard the quavering voice of Marshal Pétain, telling his beloved children that the welfare of la patrie required him to ask an armistice of the Germans. 

"There could be no doubt that it was his voice, and the P.A. found no difficulty in believing it; but to the people about him it came like a thunderbolt, staggering, paralyzing. They had assumed that the grande armée was falling back, as armies did, in order to fight from a better position. They had understood that Paris must be abandoned, so as to save it from destruction. But to surrender, to turn all France over to the boches, to desert Britain and give up the promised aid from America?—c’était la honte, la trahison! Some stood with tears running down their cheeks.

"Lanny thought, it was as he had said to Kurt, the French body had been separated from the head, and the body was paralyzed. He put what he had learned from Kurt and from Denis into a report and mailed it to the Embassy, which was still functioning. The head Nazis hated Bill Bullitt like poison, but he had stayed on, and they treated him with careful formality. They wanted no trouble with America at this stage. 

"They were formal with Paris, too, for they wanted no trouble there. The armistice was almost as unbelievable to them as to the French. The troops had strict orders to be polite to everyone; when they were off duty they wandered about staring at the sights, exactly like tourists. Oddly enough, they all appeared to be camera fiends, and wanted pictures of the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame and the Arc de Triomphe to send home. Standing before the eternal flame which guards the Unknown Soldier’s tomb, they bared their shaven blond heads. If they were officers, they saluted, and it was all absolut korrect. When the shopkeepers discovered how it was going to be, the iron shutters came down, and the “Fridolins” poured into the shops, and soon there was a flood of silk stockings and kid gloves and perfumes going back to the pregnant Mädchen of Naziland. “Pregnant Mädchen” might sound like a joke, and so it was—a Nazi joke."

Kurt invited him to lunch at Crillon, and Otto Abetz was there, once chased away, now in charge. Lanny suggested they could use Denis De Bruyne.

"In return for such advice, he was privileged to hear an outline of Nazi intentions regarding Spain, Italy, France, and French North Africa. All most interesting, and he returned to his hotel room and wrote a report and mailed it to Mr. W. C. Bullitt, just around the corner. He would have liked nothing better than to drop in and have a chat about times old and new, but he didn’t dare to, for fear that Bill might connect him in his mind with those mysterious reports which came frequently for periods and then stopped for still longer periods. Somebody was going to the Big Boss over the ambassador’s head, and who the devil could it be, and what the devil would he be saying, perhaps about the ambassador!"

The elaborate insult to France as as planned had leaked out, not through Lanny. 

"The ceremony took place on the 21st of June. Lanny didn’t attend because, for one thing, he was sick of Nazi glory, and for another, he didn’t want to make himself conspicuous."

After armistice was finally signed, Hitler came out and could not contain himself, but executed a series of capers before camera. 

"The French would pay—and oh, how they would pay! Four hundred million francs per day for the keep of the German army of occupation—as long as they chose to invite themselves!"

He visited Paris, and met Kurt and Lanny at Crillon. They were invited to join the visit to the tomb of Napoleon at Invalides.

"Kurt and Lanny strolled across the Place to the group of buildings constructed by the Sun King for his invalid soldiers. It includes the royal church, a golden-domed building to whose crypt the bones of the dead Emperor had been brought, exactly a century ago."
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